Comparison and contrast of wordform, word, morpheme, and syllable

Compare and contrast: Wordform, word, morpheme, and syllable

Here is a table that compares and contrasts a morpheme with other minimal units in language:

A …	Is the smallest unit of …	That …
Wordform	Speech or writing	Has distinctive meaning. Can occur by itself. (In most orthographies it is separated from other wordforms by a space.)
Word	Syntax	Has distinctive meaning. Can occur by itself.
Morpheme	Syntax	Has a distinctive meaning. Cannot occur by itself unless it is in a monomorphemic word.
Syllable	Pronunciation	Has no inherent distinctive meaning. Cannot occur by itself unless it is in a monosyllabic word.

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 5 January 2004