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Paradigmatic information is information requiring knowledge of morphological identity across words. It consists of the phonological consequences of knowing that a morpheme must have a single phonological underlying form, even if it surfaces differently in different words. There are two basic forms of paradigmatic information. One is morphemic alternation: the surface realizations of a single morpheme in different morphological contexts (a context consists of the other morphemes used to form the word). The other is morphemic contrast: the surface realizations of two different morphemes in the same morphological context.

Paradigmatic information is necessary for phonological learning. This can be demonstrated with a constructed linguistic system in which several distinct languages, with distinct mappings, have identical inventories of surface phonological forms. To learn the full phonology, the learner must utilize paradigmatic information: that is the only information that can distinguish the different phonotactically identical phonologies.