A study to explore the relationship between word association and lexical development

Language is a complex communication system consisting of different components such as phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Word association tests (WAT) are used as research tools to analyze how learners organize vocabulary which they have learnt, also to explore information about how the mental lexicon develops over time. Similarly the aim of this study is to investigate mental links through word association and look into how EFL learners store vocabulary and retrieve it from their mental lexicon. To do so, 15 subjects – both male and female – who were studying English as a foreign language were involved to carry out a word association test in order to discover how words are connected in their mental lexicon, in this regard a simple word association test containing eight prompt words was used. The results show that the participants displayed different patterns in their responses as Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic classification. Most of them made more Syntagmatic responses than Paradigmatic ones. As a result, it can be concluded that more participants make mental links with Syntagmatic compared to others who make links with Paradigmatic. As the present study focuses on two main categories of word associations, namely; Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic, further researches are recommended.