Abstract: The present article discusses the results of a corpus-based investigation focusing on asymmetries in nomi-nal compounding in German and Dutch. Nominal compounding is a very productive word-formation pattern in both languages, but not all German compounds can be rendered as compounds in Dutch. The asymmetries are corroborated by an analysis of Dutch translations of German nominal compounds with a nominal (NN) or a verbal (VN) first constituent. In the first, quantitative part of the article, the frequencies of the NN and VN compounds are discussed, as are the various translation types involved. The second, qualitative section links the choice of a given Dutch translation type to its origins in the formal and/or semantic characteristics of the German compound.

Keywords: nominal compounding, translation, corpus-based research, word formation, semantic relations