Morphology

Morphology

the study of the structure of words

Morpheme

the smallest meaningful unit of language

free morpheme

morphemes which stand alone and are words in their own right

bound morpheme

morphemes that cannot stand independently. They must be attached to a free morpheme

inflectional Morpheme

(bound) morphemes that do not change meaning or word class; they simply provide additional grammatical information such as plurality, possession or sense

"Derivational Morpheme

(Bound) morphemes that change the meaning of words, create new words and can sometimes change word class

Root Word (root morpheme)

this is the semantic base or centre of a word; a root word is the smallest unit around which we build new words. It may be free or bound

prefix

morphemes that are attached to the beginning of a word

suffix

morphemes that are attached to the end of a word. All inflectional morphemes are suffixes

infix

morphemes that can be added in the middle of a word (not common in english except in informal language)

affixation

the process of adding affixes to words