BOUND MORPHEME

1. What is a Morpheme?

A morpheme is the minimal grammatical unit within a language. Every word

comprises one or more morphemes. A standalone morpheme and a word are identical
but when a root word becomes modify with addition of affixes, it becomes word only.
For example:
Listen, listener, listened, listening
The root is listen is standalone morpheme and a word at a same time. When root word
was modifies with affixes like -s, -er, -ed and –ing it became a word consisting of two
morpheme in each word.
2. Bound Morphemes
Segments that cannot stand alone and occurs with another root/ stem are called
Bound Morphemes. Bound morphemes are also called affixes (prefixes, suffixes and
infixes) in English. Two bound morpheme cannot occur together but it is necessary for a
bound morpheme to occur with a root/stem.

Examples of bound morphemes:

Opened: (Open + ed) = root + suffix

Reopen: (Re + open) = Prefix + root

Men: (Man + plural) = root + infix (infix makes a change inside a root word)

The set of affixes that make up the category of bound morphemes can also be divided
into two types. Derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes

a. Derivational Morphemes: Derivational morphemes change the grammatical

categories of words. For example the word ‘bake’ (verb) is a root word (free
morpheme) and when we add bound morpheme ‘er’(a suffix) with stem: it
 becomes baker (a noun), So the grammatical category was changed from verb to
noun.
Examples
 Ful: Beauti ful, Wonder ful, Cheer ful, Truth ful, Taste ful, Flavour ful, Joy ful
 Able: Walk able, Understand able, Love able, Laugh able, Eat able
 Ment: Govern ment, Establish ment, Agree ment
 Ness: Kind ness, Truthful ness, Careless ness, Sad ness

b. Inflectional Morphemes: An inflectional morpheme is a suffix that is added to a

word to assign a particular grammatical property to that word. For example, liste
+ing = listening or boy+s = boys. They do not change the essential meaning or the
grammatical category of a word. Inflectional morphemes serve as grammatical
markers that indicate tense, number, possession, or comparison.

Examples

 Possessive: Boy’s, Girl’s, Man’s, Mark’s, Robert’s, Samantha’s, Teacher’s,

Officer’s
 Plural: Houses, Cats, Dogs, Cars, Pens, Books, Tables, Chairs
 Third-person singular: Walks, Talks, Runs, Jumps, Eats, Drinks, Sleeps, Plays
 Past tense: Walked, Talked, Ran, Jumped, Ate, Drank, Slept, Played
 Comparative: Bigger, Smaller, Taller, Shorter, Faster, Slower, Stronger,
Weaker
 Superlative: Biggest, Smallest, Tallest, Shortest, Fastest, Slowest, Strongest,
Weakest

THE END