Morpheme

Glossary of Linguistic Terms

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.

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.