The word "的话" is formed through the historical grammaticalization and fusion of two distinct elements: the possessive/modifying particle "的", which originally signaled attribution or relationship, and the noun "话", meaning "speech" or "words". Over time, this combination evolved from a more literal construction (implying "in the matter of" or "as for the words of") into a single, inseparable grammatical unit that functions as a cohesive particle. This fusion represents a process where concrete lexical items blend and simplify, shedding their individual literal meanings to create a new, abstract marker used to set up a condition or topic within a sentence's framework.