1. Free Morphemes: These can stand alone as words. They have their own meaning and can be used independently.
* Lexical Morphemes: They carry the main meaning of a word, and are typically nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
* Examples: *cat*, *run*, *happy*, *quickly*
* Functional Morphemes: They convey grammatical information, such as tense, number, or possession.
* Examples: *the*, *a*, *in*, *on*, *ing*, *ed*, *s*
2. Bound Morphemes: These cannot stand alone as words. They must be attached to a free morpheme to have meaning.
* Prefixes: They are added to the beginning of a word.
* Examples: *un-* (unhappy), *re-* (redo), *pre-* (pre-game)
* Suffixes: They are added to the end of a word.
* Examples: *-ing* (running), *-ed* (walked), *-ly* (quickly), *-ness* (happiness)
* Infixes: They are inserted within a word. (These are less common in English.)
* Example: *abso-bloody-lutely*
* Circumfixes: These surround a base word. (Also less common in English.)
* Example: *en-* and *-en* (encircle)
Additional Note:
* Morphemes can be classified as inflectional or derivational. Inflectional morphemes change the grammatical function of a word (e.g., *walk* to *walks*, *happy* to *happier*), while derivational morphemes create new words with different meanings (e.g., *happy* to *unhappy*, *run* to *runner*).
Understanding morphemes is crucial for analyzing the structure of words and how they convey meaning. It helps us understand how language works and how it can be used to create new words and expressions.