ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how sounds and groups of sounds are combined into meaningful elements of language. At the same time of course, we automatically group the words together into larger meaningful units such as phrases or sentences. Inflexional endings in some languages are used to signal relationships between words in sentences, which brings into the realm of syntax, the study of how words are combined to form larger units such as phrases, clauses, and sentences. Units which are used to form words are called morphemes, and the study of the way phonemes are combined into morphemes and morphemes into words is called morphology or morphemics. Morphemes are usually divided into two categories: free morphemes and bound morphemes. A simple word consists of a single morpheme and a compound word consist of two free morphemes used together to form a single lexical unit. A complex word consists of a free morpheme together with a bound morpheme, or of two bound morphemes.
