Here's a breakdown:
* Morpheme: The smallest unit of meaning in a language.
* Affix: A morpheme that is added to a word to change its meaning or grammatical function.
* Grammatical Meaning: The way a word functions in a sentence (e.g., noun, verb, adjective, etc.).
There are two types of affixes:
* Prefixes: Added at the beginning of a word (e.g., "un-", "re-", "pre-").
* Suffixes: Added at the end of a word (e.g., "-ing", "-ed", "-ly", "-ness").
Examples:
* "Happy" (adjective) + "-ness" (suffix) = "Happiness" (noun)
* "Run" (verb) + "-ing" (suffix) = "Running" (verb, present participle)
* "Friend" (noun) + "un-" (prefix) = "Unfriend" (verb)
By adding affixes, we can change a word's grammatical category (e.g., from noun to verb), its tense (e.g., past, present, future), or its degree (e.g., comparative, superlative).