What:
The atoms of written Language. For example:
The morphemes of the word “unbelievable”:
- un- (a prefix meaning “not”),
- believe (the root or base word), and
- -able (a suffix meaning “able to”)
Types:
- Inflectional: Parts of a word to change grammatical stuff about it (eg tense, gender, number, etc.)
- “Child” → “Children”
- “Run” → “Running”
- “Fast” → “Faster”
- Derivational: Parts of a word that change the meaning of it.
- “Teach” → “Teacher”
- “Happy” → “Unhappy”
Cool Shit on Words:
- The order words come in in English directly affect the meaning of the sentence. For example:
- “Cats eat mice” is very different to “Mice eat cats”
- But not all languages are like that. Some languages attach that information to the morphemes.
- Morphologically richer languages allow greater flexibility in word order, but “tokens” are denser.