Morpheme

Morpheme

A morpheme is a short segment of language that meets three criteria:

• It is a word or part of the word that has meaning.

• It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts without violation of it’s meaning or without meaningless remainders.

• Has a stable meaning.

Free and Bound morpheme

            There are two kinds of morpheme, free and bound morpheme. A free morpheme is a word that can stand alone and has a meaning, but a bound morpheme can’t stand alone. For Examples:

Free     : eat, read, and etc.

Bound : un-, im-, -able, and etc.

            : unlike, reading, and etc.

Base              

Morpheme:

• Root ( I write a letter)
•  Stem ( writing)
•  Bases (Retype)

Base morpheme is part of word that has  the principal meaning.

• Base have occur principle / immediate constituen

          Example : prefix ,suffix, infix.

• Allormph different pronouncation or spelling –s (prulral)

          Example : /s/ eats        /z/ dogs            /ez/ boxes

• Borrowing from another language. The meaning of bi is LIFE 

          Example : biometrics              amphibian

                       

                       

Difficulties in morphemic analysis

• Have a stock vocabulary / morphemic. Example : auto|mobile

• Persons may know a given morpheme but differ in the degree to  which they are awere of its presence in various word. Example : nose, nosey, nosefu

• Another problem result from the fact that metaphors die as language change. Example : Bank   obsolete

• Meaning is very difficult to analysis. Example : pose (place)  >interpose