Teen sex work is a closed system; we cannot invent or introduce new phonemes or syllables into the sound system of a language, nor can we operate the language effective­ly if we omit any elements in the system. The functional value of each phoneme is determined relative to all the other phonemes in the system. It is a network of contrasting relationships and, as has been suggested, learning the sound system of a language means learning the whole set of these contrasts. But this is similar to what we discovered in chapter 5 about the semantic structure of language. It, too, is a closed network of relations. The learning of a lexical word involves learning the set of relationships into which it enters with other words in the language —what we called its `sense relationships', such as synonymy, autonymy, contrariety, converseness and so on. Looking at the vocabulary of a language in this way suggests that simple or 'simple-minded' calcula­tions of relative frequency may be of little value. When one is 'learning vocabulary' one is learning a network of relations. One obviously does not 'know' a word when one has learned only its pronunciation and its grammatical function. One knows a word when one has learned how to use it acceptably semantically and that means knowing its `sense', and when one can use it appropriately in a situational context. In a true sense we do not know the full meaning of teen sex work word until we know the relations. It follows, then, that the control of vocabulary in a syllabus does not just effect a limitation on the number of words to be learned but, more seriously, a limitation on the ways those items can be used by a learner.

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