morpheme
1
7.7
- noun
- /ˈmɔrfiːm/
- Specialized
:
morfema
- In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning, like the prefix 'un-' in 'undo.'
- grammatical morphemes
- plural morpheme
- free morpheme
Examples
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The science words were matched across the lists by the number of morphemes they contained.
Academic text (2015) -
For language like English, that creature there is referred to with the morpheme dog.
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So there are languages out there in which there are morphemes that are tones.
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We use the term base word for free morphemes, one-morpheme words that can stand on their own.
Academic text (2014) -
Words are composed of morphemes, the smallest units of language that convey meaning.
Academic text (2014) -
Often there is an overlap between these two rule systems because morphemes are used to formulate sentences.
Academic text (1993) -
The instructor also demonstrated how to use the selected phrases to derive the meaning of the morphemes.
Academic text (2015) -
The word 'cats' includes two morphemes: 'cat' and the plural suffix '-s.'
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When analyzing a word, we can break it down into its morphemes to understand its meaning better.
Compounds
- Specialized
An ending or small change to a verb that shows it happened before now
- Specialized
A small ending added to a verb to show present time, like the -s in runs
How Large
Surface Forms
Morphology
morpheme = morph (opaque) = morph + eme
The suffix '-eme' is a technical linguistic combining form unfamiliar to most learners, so the derivation from 'morph' is not clearly interpretable by an average B1 learner.
Etymology
Morpheme comes from the Greek part morphe, which means 'form', and the ending -eme, which means 'unit'. So a morpheme is the smallest unit of form that has meaning, like 'un-', 'happy', and '-ness' in 'unhappiness'.