On Intra-term Relations of Complex Terms in the Description of Term Formation Patterns

In describing the structure or formation of complex words, two theoretical constructs are essential, i.e. some sort of categories of constituent elements and a set of intra-term relations. In addition, sometimes the categories of the complex words are introduced. The description of the structure and formation of complex words thus starts from the preparation of categories and intra-term relations and the nding of a set of general rules, each of which takes the form: Category x and category y combine with the relation r to form a complex unit which belongs to the category z. The same is true for the description of complex term formation, though researchers tend to focus on semantic or conceptual descriptions. This comes from an assumption that most terms manifest themselves grammatically as noun phrases and thus grammatical aspects of terms are covered by the study of words in general. What is important here is the other side of this assumption, i.e. can one understand the formation patterns of terms, as distinct from words, at the conceptual level?