Here is an article I find interesting: Keywords hold our vocabulary together in memory You can see from the drawing there a posited graph showing connections among vocabulary words, connected by likenesses in sound. An interesting excerpt: "Keywords might also accelerate language learning, including a second language, if they were introduced early." This might also help determine the type of mnemonic techniques to be used if one does use same for vocabulary. Instead of memorizing words in thematic or even random groups, one might start with words that share the same medial vowel sound and then branch out from there. A key question I don't see answered there regarding the network, is whether it starts from some initial word, in this case "fish", and builds out from there in all directions, always forming only one network, or rather whether separate smaller networks of words attach to each other over time like a giant crystal forming from smaller ones.
