The word 半夜 is formed through the direct, conceptual combination of its two component characters: 半 (bàn), meaning "half", and 夜 (yè), meaning "night". It is a logical compound where the first character descriptively quantifies the second, creating the concrete temporal concept of "half-night" or the midpoint of the night, which is naturally understood as "midnight". The meaning emerges from this straightforward pictorial and ideological fusion rather than from grammatical rules.