Mohave Hokan Molala Penutian Mon Mon-Khmer moneme [Grk mónos ‘solitary, only’]

Term introduced by Martinet (1960) for the smallest unit of language consisting of content and phonetic form that cannot be broken down further into smaller meaningful units. With regard to function, Martinet distinguishes between the open class of lexical monemes, the so-called ‘semantemes,’ whose meaning is codified in the lexicon, and the closed class of grammatical monemes, which he calls ‘morphemes,’ and further between functional monemes (prepositions), autonomous monemes (free, nonconjugatable or nondeclinable: today, sadly), and independent monemes (case, tense). Compared with the terminology introduced by American structuralism and now established, Martinet’s ‘moneme’ corresponds to the otherwise common term morpheme, his ‘semanteme’ to free lexical morphemes, his ‘morpheme’ to bound grammatical morphemes.