The Chinese word "句子" (jùzi), meaning "sentence", is a compound formed through a combination of semantic and grammatical elements: the core character "句" (jù), which historically meant a phrase or segment of speech (derived from an ancient pictograph of a hooked bamboo strip for marking pauses), is combined with the suffix "子" (zi), a very common nominalizer in Mandarin that often attaches to nouns to form a standard, concrete term. In this construction, "子" does not add independent meaning but grammatically stabilizes "句" into a disyllabic, standalone word, reflecting the phonetic and rhythmic preferences of modern Chinese, where such two-character words are predominant. Thus, "句子" literally translates to "sentence unit", with "子" functioning as a grammatical particle that completes the word.