WORDS

morphology

the study of the internal structure of words

what is a word?

a unit that can stand alone and that has a connected form with meaning

morpheme

smallest linguistic unit that has meaning

free morphemes

morphemes that can stand alone as a word

compounds

two or more free morphemes that are combined together (football)

Affix

a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form

reduplication

add the same root to the same root (like-like)

Portmanteau

blending two or more morphemes together (spork)

Lexicon

our mental dictionary where words are stored