The Morpheme

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language. A morpheme can be of different classes. Morphemes can be classified into free morpheme and bound morpheme. Morphemes whic occur alone and free morphemes.Examples of free morphemes are "boy "," man","the"etc.A bound morpheme is never used alone. It must rather be used with another morpheme,that is, as an affix or combining from.For example "ing"," in","standing",writing "," and" "reading " is a bound morpheme because it has been used with another morpheme, like ❞stand",etc.Bound morphemes can also be called affixes occurring in the beginning of a word (=suffix ) eg fondness, or within a word (=infix) eg men ("e" in "man" makes it plural). A bound morpheme is called a combining form when it can form a new word by combining with another combining form,or a word, or an affix.For example, the combining form "astr(0)logy ". Another type of morpheme is called allomorph. The morpheme which appears in forms in different contexts is an allomorph. For example, the morpheme which express plurality in English appearsin several variants :cap -caps, log-logs, mouse-mice." S" in capsis pronounced /s/,but "s" in logs is pronounced as/z/.And in "classes " it is /iz/.They all show plurality. Each of theseis an allomorph of the pluralmorpheme.So in English we get different types of morphemes.