한국서양중세사학회

This case study examined the degree of the perceived semantic transparency of noun-noun compounds with the same word family: Chinese 'ji(机)' and its English equivalence 'machine'. The result indicated that compounds with ’machine‘ right-headed were dominant in number compared with the left-headed ones while compounds with ’ji(机)’ in both positions maintained opacity. It is argued that the naming of the new creations or inventions brought about more semantically transparent noun-noun compounds in English. By contrast, the stability and limitedness of Chinese characters facilitated the meaning extension or shift in compounding, thus making the Chinese noun-noun compounds more semantically opaque via metonymy and metaphor.