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of a single morpheme. Nor are they divisible into smaller meaningful units. That is
why the morpheme may be defined as the minimum meaningful language unit.
The term morpheme is derived from Gr morphe ‘form’ + -eme. The Greek
suffix -erne has been adopted by linguists to denote
the smallest significant or
distinctive unit. (Cf. phoneme, sememe.) The morpheme is the smallest meaningful
unit of form. A form in these cases is a recurring discrete unit of speech.
A form is said to be free if it may stand alone without changing its meaning;
if not, it is a bound form, so called because it is always bound to something else.
For example, if we compare the words sportive and elegant and their parts, we see
that sport, sportive, elegant may occur alone as utterances, whereas eleg-, -ive, -ant
are bound forms because they never occur alone.
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