Relational Words

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This technique takes any existing word(s) and strives to add in relational words (e.g. ‘about, ‘except’, ‘under’, ‘though’ etc.) to modify or expand the meaning of the original word(s), or to encourage further development (devised by Crovitz, 1970 as "Relational Algorithms as described by VanGundy, 1981; 1988)). Below is a table of frequent English relational words:

About	Above	Across	After	Against	Along
Amid	Among	And	Around	As	At
Because	Before	Behind	Below	Beneath	Beside
Between	Beyond	But	By	Down	During
Except	For	From	If	In	Into
Near	Not	Now	Of	Off	On
Opposite	Or	Out	Over	Past	Round
Since	So	Still	Then	Though	Through
Throughout	To	Toward	Under	Up	Upon
When	Where	While	With	Within	Without

The method was originally designed to supplement methods that generate word pairs, see ((Attribute Listing)), some forms of ((Random Stimuli)), ((Listing)), ((Morphological Analysis)), and ((Paraphrasing Key words)).

For example, should one of these techniques generate the combination: ‘room’ and ‘kettle’ the relational words might suggest idea-stimulating variants such as :

• Room-beside-kettle
• Kettle-in-room
• Room-kettle-within etc.

It could also be used as a starting point technique in any form of idea-generation, by taking any suitable idea and adding the relational word. So if you have ‘garage sale’ as an idea, you can explore possible meanings of ideas such as ‘within the garage sale’, ‘garage sale where’ or ‘sale in garage’.

Whilst you could use the technique by working through every relational word on the list, the method is almost certainly better used selectively – e.g. by having the words on a wall chart and taking a quick look at them whenever you need inspiration.