I mean 'time' here broadly to refer both to the time that passes between the beginning of the production of the syntagm and its end, as well as to the longer time that ends up implicating all those involved in the speaking. I interpret conversational analysis in the spirit of Sacks to have demonstrated that syntagms can cross the boundaries between speakers, that they are joint construction, with the implication that the classic example below, as well as all of Saussure's, are limit cases, useful for pedagogical or hermeneutic reasons but not fundamental.

These pages are intended to suggest how this might work.

[opening]
Too little attention is paid to Saussure's discussion of syntagmatic relationships ([1915]: 122 ff.).

And yet this is the bias through which time enters structure. Indeed a focus on the syntagm reveals that structure requires time.

[example]

THE CAT ATE THE MOUSE

 

[coda]
In the production or reception of this sentence the whole (gestalt, meaning) is revealed in time. The gestalt is not available as such until all the pieces are in their place (thus the possibility of misfires, jokes, poetry, etc.).

The sequence {[opening]/[example]/[coda]/[but...]} is itself, or course, an example of a syntagm in the sense discussed here.

[but (toward a new opening)]
This restatement of Saussure does not show how Saussure can be taken interactionally rather than psychologically. To do this we must go through an alternate intellectual tradition--pragmatism--which is often presented as antithetical to structuralism .