Concept
Morpheme
Overview
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression, especially within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this is the distinction, respectively, between free and bound morphemes. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.
In English, inside a word with multiple morphemes, the main morpheme that gives the word its basic meaning is called a root (such as cat inside the word cats), which can be bound or free. Meanwhile, additional bound morphemes, called affixes, may be added before or after the root, like the -s in cats, which indicates plurality but is always bound to a root noun and is not regarded as a word on its own. However, in some languages, including English and Latin, even many roots cannot stand alone; i.e., they are bound morphemes. For instance, the Latin root reg- ('king') must always be suffixed with a case marker: regis, regi, rex (reg+s), etc. The same is true of the English root nat(e) — ultimately inherited from a Latin root meaning "birth, born" — which appears in words like native, nation, nature, innate, and neonate.
These sample English words have the following morphological analyses:
"Unbreakable" is composed of three morphemes: un- (a bound morpheme signifying negation), break (a verb that is the root of unbreakable: a free morpheme), and -able (a bound morpheme as an adjective suffix signifying "capable of, fit for, or worthy of").
The plural morpheme for regular nouns (-s) has three allomorphs: it is pronounced /s/ (e.g., in cats ), /ɪz/ or /əz/ (e.g., in dishes ), and /z/ (e.g., in dogs ), depending on the pronunciation of the root.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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In this stage it is a resultant from previous separate association and apperception processes. Then follows in the second stage of expression in speech, an analysis of that total idea into its parts, in which these parts are always put into close relations with each other. Such relations are called by grammarians subject and predicate, noun and adjective, verb and adverb, &c. The grammatical meaning of these…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, An Introduction to Psychology Translated from the Second German Edition
States what Morpheme is.
But in the majority of inferior languages, the process of “agglutination,” as it is called, has gone far enough to produce considerable stability in the compound words: there is a manifest integration. How small is the degree of this integration, however, when compared with that reached in well-developed languages is shown both by the great length of the compound words used for things and acts of constant…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Morpheme is.
This word, therefore, expressing so very abstract and metaphysical an idea, would not easily or readily occur to the first formers of language. What are called the personal pronouns, it may be observed, are among the last words of which children learn to make use. A child, speaking of itself, says, _Billy walks_, _Billy sits_, instead of _I walk_, _I sit_. As in the beginnings of language, therefore, mankind seem to…
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
States what Morpheme is.
Philosophers who discussed Morpheme
Related ideas
- Conjunction (grammar)
- Grammatical tense
- Japanese language
- Latin
- Linguistics
- Phoneme
- Denotation
- Root (linguistics)
- Syntax
- Semantics
- Noun
- Gloss (annotation)
- Generative grammar
- Part of speech
- Chinese language
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Greek language.