The word **小溪** (xiǎoxī, "small stream") is formed through the common Chinese morphological process of **modifier-head compounding**, where the first character **小** ("small") acts as an adjective modifying the second character **溪** ("stream" or "brook"). This creates an endocentric compound—a single lexical unit—whose core meaning is directly derived from its head element (**溪**), with the modifier (**小**) specifying its size, resulting in the specific meaning of a "small stream" or "brook." This structure is analogous to English compounds like "blackboard" and demonstrates how Chinese efficiently builds precise nouns by combining descriptive and substantive elements.