A morpheme<\/strong> is the smallest unit of grammatical or semantic meaning in a language. A morpheme is distinct from a phoneme because although a phoneme is the smallest meaningful unit of sound in a language, by itself a \/p\/ or \/m\/ does not have grammatical or semantic meaning. It must be combined with other phonemes into a morpheme to have such meaning. <\/p>\n When discussing morphemes, it is important not to confuse them with words, since there is a difference between the two. Consider the following words: the<\/em>, boy<\/em>, runs<\/em>, and unlucky<\/em>. Although each of these is a \u201cword,\u201d they are all very different in their make-up and usage. The term “word” therefore is not very precise. When we turn to the first two of these examples\u2014the<\/em> and boy<\/em>\u2014we see that it is not possible to divide them into smaller units of grammatical or semantic meaning. For example, we cannot divide boy<\/em> into smaller units such as b- or \u2013oy. In other words, boy<\/em> is a single morpheme. The same is true of the<\/em>.<\/p>\n The word runs<\/em>, however, can be divided into smaller units, that is, into more than one morpheme: run<\/em> and \u2013s<\/em>. Each of these has a distinct meaning, and so run<\/em> and \u2013s<\/em> are each morphemes. The word unlucky<\/em> can be divided into three morphemes: un<\/em>-, luck<\/em>, and \u2013y<\/em>. Each of these has a meaning that we know and recognize as English speakers. Here is where we see the distinction between morphemes and words. We do not consider un<\/em>– or –y<\/em> or –s<\/em> as “words,” but they each have a distinct meaning, i.e., they are each morphemes. <\/p>\n The examples above reveal that there are different types of morphemes: <\/p>\n Bound morphemes are often affixes<\/strong>. This is a general term that comprises prefixes<\/strong>, which are added to the beginnings of words, like re<\/em>– and un<\/em>-, and suffixes<\/strong>, which are added to the ends of words, like \u2013s<\/em> and –ness<\/em>; some languages also have infixes<\/strong>, which are added into the middle of words, but these are rare in English. <\/p>\n Bound morphemes are further divided into two subtypes: <\/p>\n There are eight inflectional suffixes, or more simply inflections, in English: <\/p>\n Several of these inflections are similar phonologically, but do not confuse them. The –s<\/em> on the end of 3rd person singular verbs, the –s<\/em> plural on nouns, and the -‘s<\/em> possessive ending are the same purely by coincidence. Also, do not confuse the –ing<\/em> inflectional ending used to make verbs progressive (“I am singing”) with the derivational morpheme –ing<\/em> used to make verbs into nouns (“Singing is a fun thing to do”). They sound the same, but they are used differently. Finally, do not let spelling confuse you. We signify possessive plurals in spelling by adding an apostrophe to the end of the word (e.g., boys’<\/em>) but the only inflectional ending here is the s-plural. The apostrophe is just a spelling convention.<\/p>\n There is one final distinction between different kinds of morphemes: <\/p>\n\n
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