In music, paradigmatic analysis was a method of musical analysis developed by Nicolas Ruwet during the 1960s but later named by others. It is "based on the concept of 'equivalence'. Ruwet argued that the most striking characteristic of musical syntax was the central role of repetition – and, by extension, of varied repetition or transformation (Ruwet 1987)" (Middleton 1990/2002, p. 183).