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In linguistics, morphology is the study of words, including the principles by which they are formed, and how they relate to one another within a language. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Most approaches to morphology investigate the structure of words in terms of morphemes , which are the smallest units in a language with some independent meaning .
A non-aligned morphological dictionary would represent the previous example as: (houses, house n pl ) It is possible to convert a non-aligned dictionary into an aligned dictionary. Besides trivial alignments to the left or to the right, linguistically motivated alignments which align characters to their corresponding morphemes are possible.
Derivational morphology changes both the meaning and the content of a listeme, while inflectional morphology doesn't change the meaning, but changes the function. A non-exhaustive list of derivational morphemes in English: -ful, -able, im-, un-, -ing, -er. A non-exhaustive list of inflectional morphemes in English: -er, -est, -ing, -en, -ed, -s.
These sample English words have the following morphological analyses: "Unbreakable" is composed of three morphemes: un-(a bound morpheme signifying negation), break (a verb that is the root of unbreakable: a free morpheme), and -able (a bound morpheme as an adjective suffix signifying "capable of, fit for, or worthy of"). [3]
In linguistics, a bound morpheme is a morpheme (the elementary unit of morphosyntax) that can appear only as part of a larger expression, while a free morpheme (or unbound morpheme) is one that can stand alone. [1] A bound morpheme is a type of bound form, and a free morpheme is a type of free form. [2]
The traditional definition allows roots to be either free morphemes or bound morphemes. Root morphemes are the building blocks for affixation and compounds . However, in polysynthetic languages with very high levels of inflectional morphology, the term "root" is generally synonymous with "free morpheme".
When phonemes are in free variation, speakers are sometimes strongly aware of the fact (especially if such variation is noticeable only across a dialectal or sociolectal divide), and will note, for example, that tomato is pronounced differently in British and American English (/ t ə ˈ m ɑː t oʊ / and / t ə ˈ m eɪ t oʊ / respectively), [5] or that either has two pronunciations that are ...
Clipping (morphology) Code-mixing; Collocational restriction; Colloquial Welsh morphology; Compound (linguistics) Consonant gradation; Consonant mutation; Construction morphology; Content word; Contrast (linguistics) Conversion (word formation) Cultureme