An Introductory to English Grammar

Morpheme

Definition of Morpheme: A morpheme is a short segment of language that meets three criteria:

1. It is a word or part of a word that has meaning.

2. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts without violation of Its meaning or without
meaningless reminders.

3. It recurs in different verbal environment with a relatively stable meaning.

Free and Bound Morpheme

Morpheme can be one of two, free or bound morpheme.

A free morpheme can be uttered (stand) alone with meaning, e.g straight

A bound morpheme can’t be uttered (stand) alone with meaning, e.g re- , ly , -er

Bases

Another classification of morphemes puts them in two classes: Bases and affixes (such as prefixes and
suffixes)

A base of morpheme is the part of a word that has the principal meaning.

Most of the bases in English are free morphemes.

A word may contain one base and one or more affixes. e.g (Readability) contains the free base “Read”
and the two suffixes -abil- and -ity- .
 Difficulties in Morphemic Analysis

The first difficulty is that you have your own individual stock of morphemes just as you have a
vocabulary that is peculiarly your own.

The second difficulty is that people may know a giving morpheme but differ in the degree which they
are aware of its presence in various words.

Another problem results from the fact that metaphors die as language changes.

The last matter, additive meaning, is a problem in itself.

Affixes