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Article In: International Journal of Chinese Linguistics
Vol. 13:1 (2026) ► pp.69–99

Predicting semantic transparency of Chinese QIEs using distributional semantics and lexical frequency

 | Guangzhou Institute of Science and Technology
ORCiD logo with link | Victoria University of Wellington
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
Semantic transparency refers to the relationship between the meanings of whole-words and their constituent morphemes. Mandarin Chinese Quadrisyllabic Idiomatic Expressions (QIEs, also known as [Cheng-Yu]) have a similar property, in which the whole meaning is often more than the summed meanings of the component words. Using data from Wu, D. (2016). Research on the Semantic Transparency of Chinese Idioms and their Production in Essays by Primary And Secondary School Students [Master’s thesis]. Beijing Language and Culture University., we analyze the semantic transparency of QIEs as a function computational semantic similarity, word frequency, and syntactic structure. Our results indicate that the probability of a QIE being labelled as transparent increases with its frequency, whereas computational measures of semantic similarity and structure were not strongly associated with one existing set of semantic transparency labels. We hypothesize that these results may be influenced by the nature of QIEs, where their meaning may sometimes be obscured and based on traditional stories rather than any properties of the constituents — semantic or otherwise. Therefore, we advocate for the inclusion of word frequency as a factor in transparency rating of QIEs. Additionally, we suggest exploring other variables that may improve the transparency rating models.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Semantic transparency
      • 2.1.1Human ratings of semantic transparency
      • 2.1.2Computational measures of semantic transparency
    • 2.2Chinese QIEs and its semantic transparency
      • 2.2.1The feature of Chinese QIEs
        • Two levels of meaning
        • Varied syntactic and morphological patterns
        • Syntactic patterns
        • Morphological patterns
      • 2.2.2Relationship between structure and transparency
      • 2.2.3Relationship between frequency and transparency
      • 2.2.4Wu (2016) Study
    • 2.3Current study
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Data
    • 3.2Segmenting QIEs into constituents
    • 3.3Measuring QIE Frequency
    • 3.4Measuring semantic similarity of the QIEs
      • External Similarity (ES)
      • Internal Similarity (IS)
    • 3.5Statistical analysis
  • 4.Results
    • Descriptive statistics
    • Model 1. Full range of transparency levels (continuous)
    • Model 2. Logistic regression predicting transparent and opaque only
  • 5.Discussion
    • Word frequency and QIE transparency
    • Semantic similarity and QIE transparency
    • Selection of structure pattern
    • Insights from model comparisons
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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