1、MorphemeDefinitionThe smallest unit of language The smallest unit of language in terms of relationship in terms of relationship between expression and content, between expression and content, a unit that cannot be further a unit that cannot be further divided into smaller units divided into smaller

2、units without destroying or without destroying or drastically altering the drastically altering the meaning, whether it is lexical meaning, whether it is lexical or grammatical.or grammatical.FreeBoundFree rootderivationalinflectionalBound rootaffixesMORPHEMESprefixsuffix詞綴詞綴黏著詞根黏著詞根自由詞根自由詞根詞素詞素派生詞綴

3、派生詞綴屈折詞綴屈折詞綴自由詞素自由詞素黏著詞素黏著詞素Free morphemes（自由詞素）（自由詞素）Free morphemes are those that may occur alone, that is, those which may make up words by themselves. E.g. bed dog dance nation Such words are called mono-morphemic words（單語(yǔ)素詞）（單語(yǔ)素詞）.All mono-morphemic words are free morphemes. poly-morphemic word

4、s（多語(yǔ)素詞）（多語(yǔ)素詞）：Words consist wholly of free morphemes.E.g. distempered It has three morphemes, namely, dis-, temper, and ed, of which temper is a free morpheme, dis- and ed are two bound morphemes.In contrast, -s in cups, -al in national, dis- in disopen, cannot alone. These must appear with at least

5、 one different morpheme, and called bound morphemes（黏著詞素）（黏著詞素）.The root（詞根）（詞根） is the primary lexical unit of a word, and carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents ache 痛痛 earache 耳痛耳痛 A root may also be free or bound. First, free root

6、（自由詞根）（自由詞根） morphemes are those that can stand by themselves and are the base forms of words, such as bookishSecond, there are relatively a few bound root （黏著詞根）黏著詞根）morphemes in English.Such as :pseudo-An affix（詞綴）（詞綴） is the collective term for the type of morpheme that can be used only when adde

7、d to another morpheme (the root or stem), so affix is naturally bound.Affixes in a language are limited in number, and are generally classified into three subtypes, namely, prefix（前綴）（前綴）, suffix（后綴）（后綴） and infix（中綴）（中綴）, depending on their position around the root or stem of a word. Inflectional affix（屈折詞綴）（屈折詞綴）: Affix that attached to the end of words to indicate grammatical relationships are inflectional affixInflectional affixes are mostly suffixesE.g: cups asked faster Derivational affix（派生詞綴）（派生詞綴）are affixes which