Concept in Definition ABC

The concept of morpheme must be contextualized within the framework of the language, specifically in relation to the structure of words. Regarding its definition, a morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning.

The basic structure of words

A word is understood from a minimal structure called moneme. Monemes are divided into lexemes and morphemes. The lexeme or root is the invariable part of the word and contains its meaning (from the lexeme bread we can create other words such as baker or bakery) and the morpheme is the variable part of the word that is added to the lexeme to complete its meaning.

In this way the word ball is composed of the lexeme pelot and the morpheme of gender a and the word neighbors is made up of the lexeme vec plus the gender morpheme o and the number morpheme s. This implies that words always have a semantic core that provides the meaning and a categorical core that provides the category of the word (if it is a verb, a noun or an adjective). The semantic core is the base of the word, while the categorical core is given by affixes (the gender and number of the word, among other affixes).

Morphemes are classified into two groups: grammatical and derivative

Grammatical morphemes refer to gender (masculine and feminine) and the number of words (singular or plural). Derivative morphemes in turn have the following division: prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes have the function of preceding the base of the word (for example the prefix anti and the term air create the word anti-aircraft). Suffixes are intended to add information to the base of a word (for example, the suffix ista allows you to create words such as operator or sprinter).

Morphemes, morphology and linguistics

The use of suffixes and prefixes is what allows us to know the internal structure of words or morphology. The discipline that studies morphology is the linguistics. Consequently, the knowledge of morphemes must be located within the morphology. Morphology literally means "form of words". This implies that the object of study of morphology is the word, that is, its internal structure and the variations that affect it.

Illustrating this question with a simple example, we can explain the word cats. This term is made up of three morphemes: "gat", "o" and "s" ("gat" expresses the idea of ​​a feline animal, the "O" says that it is male gender and the "s" tells us that we are talking about several individuals of this species).

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