Charlie Burtenshaw 
MOON PALACE 

Semantic transparency is a theoretical construct. It refers to the extent to which the constituents of multi-morphemic words contribute to the meaning of the whole word (e.g., fool + ish or re + hearse in the case of derived words, or snow + ball or shin + dig in the case of compound words). Semantic transparency ranges continuously. From fully transparent to fully opaque. For example, the compound snowball is considered to be transparent because it derives its meaning from both snow and ball, whereas the compound shindig is considered to be opaque because its meaning is un-related to the meaning of either shin or dig. Other compounds, such as straw-berry, are semantically transparent with respect to one constituent (e.g., berry) but opaque with respect to the other (e.g., straw). Semantic transparency has been defined and measured several different ways in the context of compound words (see Gagne et al., 2019, and Gagne et al., 2016, for discussion), each of which might tap into different aspects of semantic transparency.*



* Leah Auch, Christina L. Gagné, Thomas L. Spalding. 2020. Conceptualizing semantic transparency: A systematic analysis of semantic transparency measures in English compound words. Methods in Psychology, Volume 3