I'm not quite certain whether this question belongs here, or rather into a firearm-themed subreddit, but given the source and the time period it concerns, I shall try here first.

In a paper on the history of military technology that I have read, it was promoted the idea that the German Democratic Republic's designation Maschinenkarabiner, "machine carbine", of weapons classified as "assault rifles" in the West - that is, automatic weapons firing intermediate cartridge - , adopted for political reasons over the Third Reich propagandist Sturmgewehr for such weapons, is an accurate term from a technological standpoint. This seems, however, to be a contentious proposal: not only is "carbine" defined, to my knowledge, as a shortened version of a given rifle type, firing the same cartridges as that rifle type (i.e. full-powered rifle cartridges), more recently there have also existed carbines of assault rifle types, e.g. the CAR-15/Colt Commando, or the M4, derived from the AR-15/M-16. If an assault rifle is already accurately classified as a carbine, what would that make a carbine assault rifle? Perhaps someone familiar with the history of military technology could elucidate the accuracy of the statement made in that paper in light of these confounding considerations? Much obliged!