FREE AND BOUND MORPHEM.

 MORPHEMS VS WORD
 Morphem.

      Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words. They can not be used independently, although a word may consist of a single morpheme. Nor are morphemes divisible into smaller meaningful units. That is why the morpheme may be defined as the minimum meaningful language unit.

 Word : 
            the smallest free form.
            Word simple and complex

           e.g. write and writer, drive and driver

 Morphem : 
           the smallest meaningful unit.
           Free and Bound
           e.g. write and –er, drive and -er

 Classification of Morpheme

1. Free morphemes:

      Morphemes which are independent of other morphemes are considered to be     free.Free morphemes have complete meanings in themselves and can be used as free grammatical units in sentences. A free morpheme is one that may constitute a word (free form) by itself, in the traditional sense.

 e.g. man, faith, read, write, red

 2. Bound morphemes 

       Morphemes that can not occur as separate words. It can not stand by itself as a complete utterance; it must appear with at least one other morpheme, free or bound. Unlike free morphemes, they do not have independent semantic meaning; instead, they have attached meaning or grammatical meaning.

 e .g. -ly , re- , -ed, -s

 slow   ----------  slowly 

 brave  ---------   bravely 

 write   -------     rewrite

 listen   -------     listened

 bring   ------       brings

     Bound morpheme can change the meaning or word class of a word

e.g. fit and unfit, broad and braoden;

 It can also have grammatical function, 

 e.g. book and books.