Here's a breakdown:
* Morpheme: The smallest unit of meaning in a language.
* Bound morpheme: A morpheme that needs to be attached to another morpheme to function.
* Free morpheme: A morpheme that can stand alone as a word.
Examples of bound morphemes:
* Prefixes: *un-* (unhappy), *re-* (rewrite), *pre-* (pre-game)
* Suffixes: *-ing* (swimming), *-ed* (played), *-ly* (happily)
* Inflections: *-s* (cats), *-er* (taller), *-est* (tallest)
How bound morphemes work:
* They modify the meaning of the free morpheme they are attached to.
* They can change the part of speech of a word.
* They can indicate grammatical features like tense, number, or case.
Here's a simple analogy:
Think of LEGO bricks. A single LEGO brick is like a free morpheme – it can stand alone. However, you can add other bricks (bound morphemes) to the first brick to create something larger and more complex.
By combining free and bound morphemes, we can create a vast array of words and express a wide range of meanings.