Morfems

Morfems is not a standard term in formal linguistics. In many contexts, it appears as a misspelling or non-English variant of morphemes, the basic units of meaning in a language. When encountered, the concept usually refers to the same linguistic idea, though usage can vary by language or field.

In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest unit that carries semantic or grammatical information. Morphemes cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts without changing or destroying their meaning. They can combine to form words and contribute to the structure of a sentence without necessarily being independent words themselves.

Morphemes are typically classified as free or bound. Free morphemes can stand alone as words, such as cat or run. Bound morphemes must attach to other words, such as prefixes and suffixes: un-, -s, -ness. Morphemes can also be categorized as derivational, which create new words or change word class (happy → happiness), or inflectional, which modify a word’s grammatical form (cat → cats; run → running).

Allomorphy refers to a single morpheme having several phonetic realizations depending on context. For example, the plural morpheme in English is realized as -s, -es, or a zero form, as in cats, buses, and sheep respectively (though sheep has a different plural). Such variation does not alter the underlying morpheme.

Usage and analysis: Morphemes are central to morphological analysis and computational linguistics. They help explain word formation, syntax, and language variation. While “morfems” may appear in some sources, the widely accepted term remains morphemes.