Definition A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language. Discussion Current approaches to morphology conceive of morphemes as rules involving the linguistic context, rather than as isolated pieces of linguistic matter. They acknowledge that meaning may be directly linked to suprasegmental phonological units, such as tone or stress. the meaning of a morpheme with a given form may vary, depending on its immediate environment.

Examples (English) Unladylike The word unladylike consists of three morphemes and four syllables. Morpheme breaks: un- 'not' lady '(well behaved) female adult human' -like 'having the characteristics of' None of these morphemes can be broken up any more without losing all sense of meaning. Lady cannot be broken up into "la" and "dy," even though "la" and "dy" are separate syllables. Note that each syllable has no meaning on its own. Dogs The word dogs consists of two morphemes and one syllable: dog, and -s, a plural marker on nouns Note that a morpheme like "-s" can just be a single phoneme and does not have to be a whole syllable. Technique The word technique consists of only one morpheme having two syllables. Even though the word has two syllables, it is a single morpheme because it cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful parts.

"Morpheme" is the smallest unit of meaning that a word can be divided into: The word "like" contains one morpheme but "unlikely" contains three. un - negative meaning like ly - shows the quality

Morphemes are what make up words. Often, morphemes are thought of as words but that is not always true. 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. Banana, apple, papaya, and nanny are just a few examples. On the other hand, many words have two morphemes and only one syllable; Examples include: cats, runs, and barked. Definition of morpheme: a combination of sounds that have a meaning. A morpheme does not necessarily have to be a word. Example: the word cats has two morphemes. Cat is a morpheme, and s is a morpheme. Every morpheme is either a base or an affix. An affix can be either a prefix or a suffix. Cat is the base morpheme, and s is a suffix.