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.