morpheme

See also: Morpheme and morphème

English

WOTD – 17 May 2012, 17 May 2013, 17 May 2014, 17 May 2015

English Wikipedia has an article on:

morpheme

Etymology

From French morphème. Ultimately from Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ, “shape, form”). By surface analysis, morph +‎ -eme.

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmɔː.fiːm/
- Audio (Southern England): (file)
(General American, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈmɔɹ.fim/
(Australia, New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈmoː.fiːm/

Noun

Examples
pigs consists of two morphemes: pig (a particular animal) and s (indication of the plural). werewolves consists of three morphemes: were (“man”), wolf (a particular animal), es (plural). feet consists of two morphemes: foot (a body part) and i-mutation (plural).

morpheme (plural morphemes)

(linguistic morphology) The smallest linguistic unit within a word that can carry a meaning. It may be a letter, a syllable, or otherwise.
Synonyms: see Thesaurus:morpheme

Coordinate terms: chereme, chroneme, grapheme, lexeme, listeme, phoneme, sememe, taxeme, toneme
- 1970, Thomas Pyles, John Algeo, English: An Introduction to Language, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, page 135:
  Just as a regiment is ultimately made up of soldiers, so the sentence is of morphemes—they are its ultimate constituents.
- 1993, Peter Matthews, “Central Concepts of Syntax”, in Joachim Jacobs, Arnim von Stechow, Wolfgang Sternefeld, Theo Vennemann, editors, Syntax, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 95:
  There is therefore a natural tendency in both American and European structural linguistics to insist that the word should be syntactically decomposed. For writers such as Hockett (1958), or for that matter the early Chomsky (1957), the indivisible unit of grammar was the morpheme, and the relationship of morpheme to morpheme within the word […] was to be handled no differently from that of word to word in any larger structure.

Hyponyms

Holonyms

word

Derived terms

Translations

smallest linguistic unit

Afrikaans: morfeem
Albanian: morfemë (sq) f
Arabic: مُورْفِيم m (mōrfēm), مُورْفِيم m (mūrfīm), مَقْطَع صَرْفِيّ m (maqṭaʕ ṣarfiyy)
Armenian: ձևույթ (hy) (jewuytʻ)
Asturian: morfema m
Azerbaijani: morfem
Balinese: rupabaga
Bashkir: морфема (morfema)
Belarusian: марфе́ма f (marfjéma), марфэ́ма f (marféma) (Taraškievica)
Bulgarian: морфе́ма (bg) f (morféma)
Catalan: morfema (ca) m
Cebuano: morpheme
Chinese:
Mandarin: 詞素 / 词素 (zh) (císù), 語素 / 语素 (zh) (yǔsù)
Czech: morfém (cs) m
Danish: morfem (da) n
Dutch: morfeem (nl) n, woorddeel (nl) n
Esperanto: morfemo
Estonian: morfeem
Faroese: morfem n
Finnish: morfeemi (fi)
French: morphème (fr) m
Galician: morfema (gl) m
Georgian: მორფემი (morpemi)
German: Morphem (de) n
Greek: μόρφημα (el) n (mórfima)
Hebrew: מוֹרְפֶמָה (he) f (morfema)
Hindi: रूपिम m (rūpim)
Hungarian: morféma (hu)
Icelandic: myndan f, morfem f, minnsta merkingarbær eining mál (is) f
Ido: morfemo (io)
Indonesian: morfem (id)
Italian: morfema (it) m
Japanese: 形態素 (ja) (けいたいそ, keitaiso)
Kazakh: морфема (morfema)
Khmer: រូបសព្ទតា (ruupsaptĕəʼtaa), មូលតា (km) (muulĕəʼtaa)
Korean: 형태소(形態素) (ko) (hyeongtaeso)
Kyrgyz: морфема (morfema)
Latin: morphema
Latvian: morfēma (lv) f
Lithuanian: morfema f
Macedonian: морфе́ма f (morféma)
Malay: morfem
Mongolian:
Cyrillic: бүтээвэр (mn) (büteever), морфем (mn) (morfem)

Mongolian script: ᠪᠦᠲᠦᠭᠡᠪᠦᠷᠢ (bütügebüri)
Norwegian:
Bokmål: morfem (no) n
Persian: تکواژ (fa) (takvâž)
Polish: morfem (pl) m inan
Portuguese: morfema (pt) m
Romanian: morfem (ro) n
Russian: морфе́ма (ru) f inan (morféma)
Serbo-Croatian:
Cyrillic: морфе́ма f, мо̀рфе̄м f

Latin: morféma f, mòrfēm (sh) f
Slovak: morféma f
Slovene: morfem (sl) m
Spanish: morfema (es) m
Swahili: mofimu (sw)
Swedish: morfem (sv) n
Tagalog: multuran, morpema (tl)
Tajik: морфема (morfema)
Thai: หน่วยคำ (th) (nùai-kam)
Tibetan: སྒྲ་དོམ་ཕྲ་མོ (sgra dom phra mo)
Turkish: biçimbirim (tr), morfem (tr), biçim birimi (tr)
Ukrainian: морфе́ма f (morféma)
Uzbek: morfema (uz)
Vietnamese: hình vị (vi) (形位)
Welsh: morffem