The word "男孩" (nánhái) is formed through the direct and intuitive combination of two meaningful characters. The first character, "男", which by itself means "male" or "man", is placed before the second character, "孩", which means "child". There is no complex morphological process; it is simply a conceptual fusion where the attribute "male" modifies the category "child", creating the composite meaning of "boy". This formation is analogous to building a basic compound in English, where "male" and "child" are joined to specify a male child.