Making Sense of Morphemes
The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation
Making Sense of Morphemes
A GrammarBook.com reader recently wrote to us with a question about the use of morphemes in American English. We thought this was a good opportunity to review the subject in further understanding the structure and parts of our language.
Language, like matter, can be broken down from its largest to its smallest components. The five grammatical units of English are sentence, clause, phrase, word, and, the least of them, the morpheme. (An alphabet letter would not be considered a grammatical unit, nor would phonemes and syllables, which pertain to sounds in language.)
Dictionary.com defines a morpheme as “any of the minimal grammatical units of language, each constituting a word or meaningful part of a word, that cannot be divided into smaller independent grammatical parts, such as ‘the,’ ‘write,’ or the ‘-ed’ of ‘waited.’ ”
Every word in American English includes at least one morpheme. A morpheme differs from a word mainly in that it may or may not stand alone, whereas a word, by definition, is always independent.
When a morpheme can stand alone with its own meaning, it is a root, or the base to which other morphemes can be added (e.g., dog, cat, house). When a morpheme depends on another morpheme to complete its idea, it is an affix (e.g., -est needs fast to function for the superlative fastest; il- needs logical to help us state something is “not” logical).
Thus, morphemes are either free (root) or bound (affix). Because it has its own meaning, a free morpheme can serve as a word that does not always require other morphemes. Because a bound morpheme offers only a partial meaning, it cannot service as word; it will always have to join with a free morpheme to form one. Both prefixes and suffixes are bound morphemes.
Consider the morphemes in the following words; the bound morphemes are italicized and separated from the free morphemes by hyphens:
| multi-million-aire | un-certain-ty |
| trans-continent-al | dis-agree-ment |
| tele-graph-y | peace-ful-ness |
Understanding morphemes helps us better recognize how words are formed and frees us to work with linguistic parts more aptly in achieving written precision.
Pop Quiz
In the following words, identify if the italicized morpheme is free or bound.
1. uncommon
a) free morpheme
b) bound morpheme
2. honorary
a) free morpheme
b) bound morpheme
3. provocative
a) free morpheme
b) bound morpheme
4) inflectional
a) free morpheme
b) bound morpheme
5) capitalization
a) free morpheme
b) bound morpheme
Pop Quiz Answers
1. uncommon
a) free morpheme
b) bound morpheme
2. honorary
a) free morpheme
b) bound morpheme
3. provocative
a) free morpheme (the root is provoke)
b) bound morpheme
4) inflectional
a) free morpheme
b) bound morpheme
5) capitalization
a) free morpheme
b) bound morpheme
If the article or the existing discussions do not address a thought or question you have on the subject, please use the "Comment" box at the bottom of this page.
Regarding morphemes, then what is the difference between a morpheme and syllable?
A morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit with a meaning in a word, whereas a syllable is the smallest speech sound in a word.
Consider the word “transcontinental” as an example. “Transcontinental” has three morphemes, or units in a word that have a meaning: “trans-” (bound morpheme), “continent” (free morpheme), and “-al” (bound
morpheme). The same word has five syllables (sounds), not all of which have a meaning or even a unity to form a morpheme: “trans-con-ti-nen-tal.”
Two things I need clarification on:
1) Wouldn’t a phoneme, after morpheme, be the smallest grammatical unit of English?
2) You say, “Thus, morphemes are either free (root) or bound (affix). A free morpheme has its own meaning. A bound morpheme does not; both prefixes and suffixes are bound morphemes.” Yet, you use “il-logical” as an example of this and il- means not, doesn’t it? That tells me bound morphemes can have meaning on their own.
1) A morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in language. A phoneme is an indivisible sound in language. In a word such as “continental,” for example, the morphemes are “continent” (free) and “-al” (bound). Each morpheme has a meaning in building the word. Phonemes are the sounds that form the word: “con-ti-nen-tal.” The sounds produce the words but do not have meanings of their own.
2) A free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand on its own without any other morphemes – e.g., we can say, “That statement is logical.” A bound morpheme has a partial meaning that is not complete unless it is joined to a free morpheme; we would not say, “That statement is il-.”
When there are multiple ways to form a noun, I find it difficult to determine which to use. This is often the case for nouns that have a “-ness” construction. For example, if I appreciate concise writing, should I express that sentiment as “I appreciate conciseness” or “I appreciate concision”? Is there a standard rule for that? Other examples:
– Beauty & beautifulness
– Wrath & wrathfulness
– Tact & tactfulness
– Chivalry & chivalrousness
– Placidity & placidness
Please help! Thank you.
We are not aware of a standard rule for forming these nouns, but we do find E.B. White’s advice in The Elements of Style helpful: “Use the smallest word that does the job.” You can test your noun by checking a dictionary.
I would dispute the idea that bound morphemes don’t have meaning. If they didn’t have meaning they would not be able to qualify the morpheme they are linked to.
As the post states, bound morphemes depend on other morphemes to form their meaning.