leslie, Five un + gentle + man + li + ness

How many morphemes does the word "controversy" have?

morpheme is the smallest significant unit of grammar,isn't it?

hey leslie it has 5. *bound morphemes need to be attached to other words* *free morphemes can stand alone as words themselves* un - is a bound morpheme meaning "not" gentle - is a free morpheme meaning "kind" man - is a free morpheme meaning " a member of the male sex" li - is the conjugating form of the bound morpheme "ly" which means "in the way of" or "to be like/similar to" ness - is a bound morpheme meaning "the quality of" So if you took all the morphemes and instead wrote a sentence to mean the same thing, it would be like " To not have the quality of being a kind man." Hope that helped! ^^

Hi! Yes I counted 5 also... here's how it might be built up: man ...gentleman (or, manly)... ...gentlemanly... ...ungentlemanly (or, gentlemanliness)... ...ungentlemanliness. While 'ungentle' and 'unmanly' are also possibilities, 'ungentleman' is not really accepted as a word.