Morfologija

Morfologija is a term meaning morphology, used in several languages. In linguistics, it denotes the study of the structure of words and word formation, including the division of words into morphemes and the rules by which morphemes combine. In biology, morphology is the study of the form and structure of organisms, their external features and internal anatomy, often linked to development and genetics.

In linguistic morphology, core concepts include morphemes (the smallest units of meaning), roots, stems, affixes (prefixes, suffixes, infixes), and processes such as inflection (grammatical marking like tense, case, number) and derivation (creating new words with new meanings). Compounding, reduplication, and morphophonological changes expand the stock of words. Morphology is often contrasted with syntax and phonology, and linguists classify languages by morphological type (isolating, agglutinative, fusional, polysynthetic). Morphological analysis involves segmenting words into morphemes, identifying allomorphs and paradigms, and describing alternations.

In biology, morphology studies form, size, shape, and structure of organisms and their parts, from organs to whole bodies. It supports taxonomy, systematics, and functional biology, and overlaps with anatomy and developmental biology. Modern morphology uses morphometrics, imaging, and comparative methods to document variation within and between species, and to infer evolutionary relationships.