The word "子曰" is formed by combining the character "子", which here denotes "Master" referring to Confucius, with the character "曰", meaning "said". This creates a grammatical unit where "子" serves as the subject and "曰" as the verb, producing the literal phrase "The Master said". It functions as a complete utterance through this straightforward subject-verb construction, typically used to introduce spoken statements in classical Chinese texts.