Morpheme

A morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit with semantic meaning or put in simpler terms it is a combination of sounds that have a meaning.

In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes (the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound).

In written language morphemes are composed of graphemes (the smallest units of written language).

A morpheme does not necessarily have to be a word. Some single morphemes are words while other words have two or more morphemes within them.

Morphemes are also thought of as syllables but this is incorrect. Many words have two or more syllables but only one morpheme. For example:

On the other hand, many words have two morphemes and only one syllable. For example:

Cat is a morpheme, and s is a morpheme. Every morpheme is either a base or an affix. The affix can be either a prefix or a suffix.

In our example cat is the base morpheme, and s is the suffix.