- morpheme
-
—morphemic, adj. —morphemically, adv./mawr"feem/, n. Ling.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. Cf. allomorph (def. 2), morph (def. 1).[1895-1900; < F morphème; see MORPH-, -EME]
* * *
In linguistics, the smallest grammatical unit of speech.It may be an entire word (cat) or an element of a word (re- and -ed in reappeared). In so-called isolating languages, like Vietnamese, each word contains a single morpheme; in languages such as English, words often contain multiple morphemes. The study of morphemes is included in morphology.* * *
in linguistics, the smallest grammatical unit of speech; it may be a word, like “place” or “an,” or an element of a word, like re- and -ed in “reappeared.” So-called isolating languages, such as Vietnamese, have a one-to-one correspondence of morphemes to words; i.e., no words contain more than one morpheme. Variants of a morpheme are called allomorphs; the ending -s, indicating plural in “cats,” “dogs,” the -es in “dishes,” and the -en of “oxen” are all allomorphs of the plural morpheme. The word “talked” is represented by two morphemes, “talk” and the past-tense morpheme, here indicated by -ed. The study of words and morphemes is included in morphology (q.v.).* * *
Universalium. 2010.
