Abstract: The study addresses how people understand Chinese noun-noun combined concepts and the related factors on interpretation strategy. In the experiment 600 Chinese undergraduates interpreted 160 combined concepts made of 32 concepts. The results showed that: (a) Property interpretation and relation interpretation were two primary strategies; (b) subjects preferred property interpretation to relation interpretation when the first sub-concept had a salient feature; (c) the similarity between two sub-concepts had no effect on property interpretation, but had effect on relation interpretation; and (d) combination of living things got more property interpretation, but combination of artifacts got more relation interpretation. Some new findings were inconsistent with either Competition Among Relations in Nominals Theory or Dual-Process Theory, which indicated the new issues in the field of conceptual combination.

Key words: combined concept, conceptual combination, sub-concept, property interpretation, relation interpretation