Morpheme – is one of the central notions of grammatical theory, without which no serious attempt at grammatical study can be made. Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of the language.
A great number of words have a composite nature, i.e. they are made up of small units each possessing a sound form and meaning.
Classification. According to the semantic classification morphemes play in constituting the meaning of the word, morphemes are subdivided into: root morphemes; affixes.
Root morpheme is a lexical center or a nucleus of a word. It has an individual lexical meaning shared by no other morpheme in the language. The root morpheme is isolated as the morpheme comes to a set of words making a word-cluster. e.g.: handy, handsome, handicraft. Affixes — endings, inflections, outer formatives have only grammatical meaning. They are studied mostly in grammar but they constitute different word forms within the word paradigm. Affixes are relevant for building various types of items. Stem is a part of a word which remains unchanged after stripping off derivational and functional affixes. The stem expresses the lexical and part of speech meaning. e.g.: hand; hands. Affixes change their positions as regards the root. They can be free types of suffixes.
Prefixes are derivational morphemes standing before the root and modifying its meaning. They have part of speech meaning. They can distinguish one part of speech from another. e.g.: sleep; asleep.
Prefixes may modify the stem for 1 time: pre-; post-; fore-; 2 place: in-; 3 negation: un-; dis-; mis- etc. Suffixes are derivational morphemes following the stem and forming a new derivative in a different part of speech or a different word class. e.g.: length, n.; lengthen, v.
Infixes tmesis — are affixes placed within the word. e.g.: stand, stood. In general there are no traces of this nasal infix n in the present tense of some Indo-European verbs. Tmesis is the separation of the parts of a compound word by the intervention of one or more words. e.g.: absolutely; absoblodylutely.
Structurally morphemes are classified into:
Free morpheme is a unit which coincides with a stem or a word group. A great many root morphemes are free like hand which can be used separately.
Bound morphemes are never used alone, used only as constituent parts of word. In other words they are bound to other morphemes. Affixes are always bound, because they always make part of a word. Many root morphemes are bound. e.g.: ceive — perceive, conceive; tain — contain, pertain. Semi-affixes. Some elements of English vocabulary occur as independent lexical units and as constituent parts of a great many of English words. They became so frequent as second elements that seem to have acquire the valency like that of affixes. e.g.: land, man, like, proof, looking, worthy etc
