Morphology: Morpheme and Word

What is a morpheme? | | | * A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language. * a morpheme is the smallest semantic unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word, by definition, is a freestanding unit of meaning. Every word comprises one or more morphemes. * any of the minimal grammatical units of a language, each constituting a word or meaningful part of a word, that cannot be divided into smaller independent grammatical parts, as the, write, or the -ed of waited. Compare allomorph ( def 2 ) , morph ( def 1 ) . | * | * |

Examples
Unbreakable" comprises three morphemes: un- (a bound morpheme signifying "not"), -break- (the root, a free morpheme), and -able (a morpheme signifying "can be done").
Allomorphs of the plural morpheme for regular nouns: /s/ (e.g. in cats /kæts/), /ɨz/ (e.g. in dishes /dɪʃɨz/), and /z/ (e.g. in dogs /dɒɡz/).
Examples
Unbreakable" comprises three morphemes: un- (a bound morpheme signifying "not"), -break- (the root, a free morpheme), and -able (a morpheme signifying "can be done").
Allomorphs of the plural morpheme for regular nouns: /s/ (e.g. in cats /kæts/), /ɨz/ (e.g. in dishes /dɪʃɨz/), and /z/ (e.g. in dogs /dɒɡz/).
Discussion | | Current approaches to morphology conceive of morphemes as rules involving the linguistic context, rather than as isolated pieces of linguistic matter. They acknowledge that | | * meaning may be directly linked to suprasegmental phonological units, such as tone or stress. * the meaning of a morpheme with a given form may vary, depending on its immediate environment. | | | | |

Examples (English) | | * Unladylike * The word unladylike consists of three morphemes and four syllables. * Morpheme breaks: * un- 'not'