Morphology

Morphology is the study of words.

· A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit or part of a word.

· Words are made up of free and bound morphemes.  Linguists analyze words by their structure.

· Simple words have one free morpheme, complex words combine free and bound morphemes. 

Definition
	A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language.

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.
	Source: Payne, T. 1997a 20–21

Examples (English)

·         Unladylike The word unladylike consists of three morphemes and four syllables. ·         Morpheme breaks: un- 'not' lady '(well behaved) female adult human' -like 'having the characteristics of' None of these morphemes can be broken up any more without losing all sense of meaning. Lady cannot be broken up into "la" and "dy," even though "la" and "dy" are separate syllables. Note that each syllable has no meaning on its own. ·         Dogs ·         The word dogs consists of two morphemes and one syllable: dog, and -s, a plural marker on nouns Note that a morpheme like "-s" can just be a single phoneme and does not have to be a whole syllable. ·         Technique The word technique consists of only one morpheme having two syllables. Even though the word has two syllables, it is a single morpheme because it cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful parts.

Classification
	Morphemes may be classified, on the basis of word formation, characteristics into the following types:
	Morpheme type Structure Bound Free root simple, made up of a single morpheme; a basis for compounding and affixation   yes/no   yes/no stem may be complex, made up of one or more morphemes; a basis for affixation   yes/no   yes/no ·         affix prefix infix suffix suprafix simulfix circumfix simple   yes   no ·         clitic proclitic enclitic simple   yes (phonologically)   yes (syntactically)
	Note: A clitic is a kind of morpheme that does not fit well in the above classification system because it is phonologically bound but syntactically free.