Vocabulary networks workshop 1: Introduction

Abstract

The idea that a vocabulary is a network of words is one that has become a common theme of the second language (L2) vocabulary research literature. However, not many people have considered the wider implications of this powerful metaphor. This paper is the first in a series of workshops that examines some of these implications. In this first workshop, we introduce some very simple computational models which illustrate some basic properties of network structures. The workshop consists of a set of interactive programs that model a vocabulary as a Cellular Automaton—a minimally organized network where each word is linked to a small number of other words, and words change their activity status depending on the inputs they receive from other words. These networks exhibit some surprising emergent properties which have important implications for the way we understand and think about real vocabulary networks.