Chains of associations
Our minds are a network of linked concepts. For instance, when we hear black, we might think of cat, or white, or mail. These are our word associations. With databases collecting data on people’s common conceptual links, word associations are becoming increasingly used in applied linguistics research. One useful resource for word associations is the Small World of Words which is used in this Perplexitaal. The goal of this Perplexitaal if for you to use the SWoW database to find the shortest association path between two concepts. For example, if you want to show that research is fun, you can start with the input word research, one of its associations is work, one of the association of work is play, and one of the associations of play is fun. So there’s a 4-step chain between research and fun: research > work > play > fun.
Your tasks
1. Find the shortest association chain between linguistics and fun
2. Find the shortest association chain between Thailand and linguistics
The rules:
Use the database at https://smallworldofwords.org/en/project/explore
Type linguistics as the input
For each word in the chain, you can only use words in the Forward associations with a rating of at least 5.
How many steps are there in the shortest chain you can find and what are the links in the chain?
Sources like SWoW rely on users to expand their database, so please help out by playing the game at https://smallworldofwords.org/en
