Bound morpheme

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In morphology, a bound morpheme is a morpheme that cannot stand alone as an independent word. A free morpheme is one which can stand alone.

Most English language affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are bound morphemes, e.g., -ment in "shipment", or pre- in "prefix".

Many roots are free morphemes, e.g., ship- in "shipment", while others are bound.

The morpheme ten- in "tenant" may seem free, since there is an English word "ten". However, its lexical meaning is derived from the Latin word tenere, "to hold", and this or related meaning is not among the meanings of the English word "ten", hence ten- is a bound morpheme in the word "tenant".

There are some distinguished types of bound morphemes.

Cranberry morphemes

A cranberry morpheme^[1][2] or unique morpheme^[3] is one with extremely limited distribution so that it occurs in only one word. A popular example is cran- in cranberry" (hence the term "cranberry morpheme").

Unique morphemes are examples of the linguistic notion of fossilization: loss of productivity or usage of grammar units: words, phrases, parts of words. Besides fossilized root morphemes, there are also fossilized affixes (suffixes and prefixes).

References

See also

• Unpaired word
• Fossil word

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