What is a morpheme?

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.

Generic
	A morpheme is a kind of
	What is a constituent?

See also
	Comparison and contrast of wordform, word, morpheme, and syllable Comparison of morpheme-morph-allomorph and phoneme-phone-allophone

Sources
	Crystal 1985 198–199
	Hartmann and Stork 1972 145
	Mish 1991 772
	Pike and Pike 1982 450

Context for this page:

Concept module: morpheme
In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): M
In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
In bookshelf: Linguistics

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