What are morphemes?

Answer 1

A morpheme is a word or a word element that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts. In the word "singing," sing is a morpheme and ing is a morpheme.

In the word "friendliest," friend is a morpheme, ly is a morpheme, and est is a morepheme.

Answer 2

A free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand alone, as opposed to a bound morpheme.

The word "swordfish", for instance, is made of two free morphemes: sword and fish. The word "selfish", on the other hand, includes a free morpheme (self) and a bound morpheme (the suffix -ish).

Answer 3

A free morpheme is a word element (morpheme) that can stand alone as a word. They are also called an unbound morpheme or a free-standing morpheme.

Many words in English consist of a single free morpheme. For example, each word in the following sentence is a distinct morpheme: "I need to go now." None of the five words in that sentence can be divided into smaller parts that have meaning.

There are two basic kinds of free morphemes: content words and function words. Content words carry most of the content of a sentence. Function words usually perform some kind of grammatical function, carrying little meaning of their own.

Answer 4

A morpheme is an undividable unit of meaning in a language.