I don't just want to be "talking about" "switching on lights" or "bells" or "sounds" in my classroom, I want to know why I might be talking about them. Without examining "superordinates", Rinvolucri's exercises seem to be firing off at random into the lexicogrammar, much like being asked to talk about a fire extinguisher for two minutes or think of 101 uses for your copy of Grammar Games (besides teach with it).
A light is simply a "DEVICE that produces light, such as a lamp or a light bulb", a device an "OBJECT or machine which has been invented to fulfil a particular purpose", an object "a THING that you can see or touch but that is not usually a living animal, plant or person", and a thing "(a word) used to refer in an approximate way to an object or to avoid naming it" (and there the trail seems to run cold in my CALD). There isn't ultimately anything that "remarkable" or "illuminating" about a light beyond an appreciation of its "convenience" (as opposed to, say, a consideration of how a hamster got its cheekpouches. They really are such greedy little creatures, aren't they, nibbling the earth away grams at a time!
). A bell is "a hollow metal object shaped like a cup which makes a ringing sound when hit by something hard"...how would you describe its sound...hmm...metallic? Hollow? Hard? (I hope nobody says 'Bells ring' 
, or even, 'Like it's Rinvolucri's funeral' 
).Tell me honestly, what associations are springing to mind with each of those last three words there? Something to do with taste; perhaps regarding the shape/emptiness of an object, and by metaphorical extension, to describe a victory; and more to do with the sense of touch than sound, right? The point is, do we need to describe the sound a bell makes? Is it something we usually spend our time doing? More importantly, is it something we can spend time on in an ESL classroom where, to use a cliche, there is "so little" time (to bother getting serious in?!)?
(I still like the idea of guessing what a sound was, that is, what produced a sound; or of asking what is still producing a sound, and maybe expressing annoyance. But these associations, query < > sound, and annoy < > sound, would probably not emerge clearly from a framework/relational semantics; functions are doubtless more visible in a syntagmatic rather than paradigmatic approach).
Often the only things of any immediate, linguistic importance are the collocations in the examples (that's not to say that Rinvolucri's exercise isn't intellectually or emotionally fascinating, affectively compelling, a way to explore thoughts and produce English at random, but you could as easily find out many fascinating things by e.g. looking up what 'hollow' means, if you'd had your nose stuck in a dictionary and were intrigued by that word in the CALD's 'bell' definition), or noticing that e.g. another meaning of 'a light' is 'sthg to light cigarettes, that is, a matchstick or lighter'. Collocations and phrases and "finally" sentences could then be assigned a function and/or slotted into the discoursal and/or conceptual hierachy.
That's all just a way of long-winded way of saying, 'Learn your English thoroughly if you want to be able to talk about "anything"!'.
Maybe it can produce something worth exploring.
one.