The word "多半" (duōbàn) is formed through the compounding of two independent morphemes: "多" meaning "many/much" and "半" meaning "half". This combination creates a new adverbial meaning that semantically shifts from the literal sum of its parts ("more than half") to a more abstract and commonly used sense of "most likely" or "probably", as well as "for the most part". It is a typical example of lexicalization in Chinese, where a phrase becomes a fixed word with a specialized meaning, in this case expressing a high probability or a majority estimation rather than a strict numerical quantity.