"A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression."
The points at which one morpheme ends and another begins, including rules for morpheme placement and pronunciation.
Morpheme: A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language. It can be a word or a part of a word.
Bound Morpheme: A bound morpheme is a morpheme that cannot stand alone as a word.
Free Morpheme: A free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand alone as a word.
Affix: An affix is a bound morpheme that is added to a word to modify its meaning.
Prefix: A prefix is an affix that is added to the beginning of a word.
Suffix: A suffix is an affix that is added to the end of a word.
Infix: An infix is an affix that is added in the middle of a word.
Stem: A stem is the main part of a word to which affixes are added.
Inflectional Morpheme: An inflectional morpheme is a bound morpheme that modifies the grammatical function of a word.
Derivational Morpheme: A derivational morpheme is a bound morpheme that creates a new word with a new meaning.
Root: A root is the main part of a word that carries its core meaning.
Analytic Language: An analytic language is a language where morphemes are mostly free and identified by their position in a sentence rather than by a change in the form of words.
Agglutinative Language: An agglutinative language is a language where morphemes are mostly bound and added to the end of words to build up complex words.
Fusional Language: A fusional language is a language where morphemes are often combined in a way that it is difficult to see where one morpheme starts and another ends.
Polysynthetic Language: A polysynthetic language is a language which combines many morphemes into one word.
Morphological Typology: Morphological typology describes the ways in which morphemes are used in different languages.
Compound Word: A compound word is a word composed of two or more independent words.
Reduplication: Reduplication is a morphological process which involves repetition of all or part of a word.
Clitic: A clitic is a morpheme that is phonologically dependent on a nearby word and has the syntactic function of a separate word.
Morphophonemics: Morphophonemics is the branch of linguistics that studies the relations between morphemes and phonemes.
Free morpheme boundary: A free morpheme is a standalone word that can occur independently without requiring another word to complete its meaning. Examples include words like 'cat,' 'run,' and 'happy.'.
Bound morpheme boundary: A bound morpheme is a linguistic unit that cannot occur independently, requiring the addition of other morphemes to form a complete word. Examples include affixes like 're-' in 'reform' or '-ing' in 'running.'.
Inflectional morpheme boundary: An inflectional morpheme is a bound morpheme that is added to a word to indicate grammatical information such as tense, plurality, and gender. Examples include '-s' in 'cats' and '-ed' in 'walked.'.
Derivational morpheme boundary: A derivational morpheme is a bound morpheme that changes the meaning of a word, often creating a new word altogether. Examples include 're-' in 'reform,' '-ish' in 'greenish,' and '-un' in 'unhappy.'.
Root boundary: A root is the foundational morpheme upon which words are built. It is the basic unit of meaning in any language.
Stem boundary: A stem is a linguistic unit that serves as the foundation of a word, typically consisting of a root and any other bound morphemes that attach to it.
Prefix boundary: A prefix is a type of bound morpheme that is added to the beginning of a word to alter its meaning. Examples include 'un-' in 'undo' or 'pre-' in 'preview.'.
Suffix boundary: A suffix is a type of bound morpheme that is added to the end of a word, modifying its meaning or part of speech. Examples include '-able' in 'drinkable' or '-ness' in 'happiness.'.
Infix boundary: An infix is a type of bound morpheme that is added to the middle of a word to alter its meaning. This type of morpheme is not commonly found in the English language, but it is used in some other languages. An example in English might be inserting '-bloody-' into 'plumbers' to create 'plumbloodyers'.
Suprafix boundary: A suprafix is a morpheme that is placed above a word to indicate its grammatical function, as in tone markers in some African languages.
Circumfix boundary: A circumfix is a type of bound morpheme that is added to both the beginning and end of a word to alter its meaning. This is not common in English, but examples can be found in other languages.
Co-occurring boundary: This refers to morphemes that are pronounced together, but are not bound to each other. For example, 'oh my god' is a phrase composed of three free morphemes, 'oh,' 'my,' and 'god,' which co-occur frequently in spoken language.
Zero boundary: This refers to cases where no morpheme is present, but meaning is still conveyed through context or grammar. This is common in English, where inflectional morphemes, such as tense, are often indicated by changes in the verb form without the addition of any affix.
Reduplication boundary: Reduplication is a morphological process in which a word is repeated, often with a slight change in form or meaning. Examples include 'ping-pong,' 'mama,' and 'choo-choo.'.
Clitic boundary: A clitic is a type of bound morpheme that function phonologically like separate words, but are grammatically connected with their host word. Examples include 'n't' in 'don't' and '-'s' in 'dog's.'.
Bound-root boundary: Some bound morphemes can serve as roots in the construction of other words. An example is the root 'port' in 'transport,' 'porter,' and 'support.'.
Stem-deriving boundary: This refers to the morphological process of creating new words by attaching a derivational morpheme to an existing stem. For example, the stem 'act' can be transformed into the noun 'actor' by adding the derivational morpheme '-or.'.
Stem-modifying boundary: This refers to the morphological process of modifying the stem of a word by adding inflectional morphemes, such as tense or voice markers.
Compound boundary: A compound is a word made up of two or more free morphemes in which the meaning of the whole is different from the meanings of the individual parts. Examples include 'toothbrush,' 'blueberry,' and 'breakfast.'.
Adnominal boundary: This refers to morphological processes that occur between adjectives and nouns, such as plural markers or gender markers.
"The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology."
"In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words."
"Morphemes that stand alone are considered roots."
"Other morphemes, called affixes, are found only in combination with other morphemes."
"This distinction is not universal and does not apply to, for example, Latin, in which many roots cannot stand alone."
"For instance, the Latin root reg- ('king') must always be suffixed with a case marker."
""Unbreakable" is composed of three morphemes: un-, break, and -able."
"un- (a bound morpheme signifying "not")"
"break (the root, a free morpheme)"
"-able (a bound morpheme signifying "an ability to be done")"
"The plural morpheme for regular nouns (-s) has three allomorphs."
"it is pronounced /s/ (e.g., in cats)"
"it is pronounced /ɪz, əz/ (e.g., in dishes)"
"it is pronounced /z/ (e.g., in dogs)"
"depending on the pronunciation of the root"
"the concept of plurality"
"an ability to be done"
"a bound morpheme"
"For a language like Latin, a root can be defined as the main lexical morpheme of a word."