ABSTRACT
When we think of the concept of meaning, we usually think of word meanings. However, other units of language also “have” meaning. One of these meaningful units, the morpheme, is below the level of the word. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language, and all words are composed of at least one morpheme. Such words as black, blue, and berry consist of one morpheme each. In these examples, the morpheme and the word are one and the same. These morphemes are called free morphemes because they need not be combined with other morphemes— they can occur alone. They can also be combined with other morphemes to form other words, such as blackberry or blueberry, which are composed of two free morphemes each. The other type of morpheme is the bound morpheme. These cannot occur alone, but must be combined with other morphemes in order to form a word. The plural suffix -s is a bound morpheme that, when added to a noun (like dog), produces the plural form (dogs). Other examples of bound morphemes are -ing, as in asking, – ed as in walked, un- and -ful as in uneventful. All meaningful prefixes and suffixes are bound morphemes. Indeed, bound morphemes are meaningful precisely because they change one or more aspects of a word’s meaning.
