This document discusses types of morphemes including free morphemes, bound morphemes, and zero morphemes. Free morphemes can stand alone as words and have meaning on their own. They include lexical morphemes like nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Grammatical free morphemes include articles, prepositions and pronouns. Bound morphemes cannot stand alone and are affixes that attach to free morphemes, changing the word's meaning. Common bound morphemes are prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. Inflectional suffixes do not change a word's grammatical category while derivational suffixes do change the category. Some words have zero

1. A S S S T . P R O F . & H O D ,
E N G . D E P T . , B . P . A R T S , S . M . A . S C I . , K . K . C . C O M M . C O L L E G E , C H A L I S G
A O N D I S T . J A L G A O N
R A V I N D R A B O R S E 1 @ G M A I L . C O M
Types of morphemes

2. 1} Free Morpheme/Base
 A free morpheme is a morpheme which
stands by itself as a single word . A free
morpheme has an independent meaning .It
means the root word or base word . Free
morphemes has two sub types.
 1.Lexical free morpheme
 2.Grammatical free morpheme

3. 1] lexical free morphemes
 Lexical free morphemes means a word like Noun ,
Adjective, Verb and Adverb.
 Examples.
1. Rushikesh.
2. Angry.
3. Play.
4. Slow.

4.  A Grammatical free morpheme it the word like
Articles ( A, An , The , ) Preposition , Pronoun ,
Conjunction , Demonstrative , (This , That , There ,
Those)
 Example : Identify the free morphemes in the
sentences.
1. Silas is a hero in the novel Silas Marner .
L L G L G G L L L
2. America is a big country .
L L G L L

5.  A bound morpheme is a morpheme which
normally can not stand by itself . It has no
independent meaning a bound morpheme
attached or joined to a free morpheme. A
bound morpheme is also called an Affix.
 Example:
1. Downloading – This word has two morphemes
download and ing . The first morpheme download
is free morpheme and second morpheme ing is
bound morpheme.

6. 1.Prefix- A prefix is added to the beginning of a
free morpheme. There many prefixes in English.
Prepaid, Disconnected, Unhappy, Abnormal,
Impossible, Misfortune, Incorrect.
2.Infix- An infix is joined in the middle of a free
morphemes. Some times the spelling and the
sound in free morphemes can be changed
because of an infix.
Man=Men , Woman=Women , Foot=Feet

7. 3.Suffix – A suffix is joined at the end of a free
morpheme.
Beautiful= Beauty is free morpheme and ful is
bound morpheme or suffix .
*A suffix has two types :
1. Inflectional Suffix :
2. Derivational Suffix:

8.  An inflectional suffix does not change the
grammatical class or grammatical category of a
free morphemes.[Grammatical category Noun ,
Verb , Adjective , Adverb]
 Example: Boys- This word has two
morphemes . The first morpheme boy has the
grammatical categories is noun . If the bound
morpheme S is added ,We get a new word
boys is also a noun. So S is an inflectional
suffix.
 The inflectional suffix is also called class
maintaining suffix .

9. 1.Present tense/Plural suffix- s/es
Girl + s = Girls
(n) (n)
2.Past tense – e/ed
Play + ed = played
(v) (v)
3.Progressive suffix – ing
Meet + ing = meeting
(v) (v)
4.Perfective suffix – n / en
Take + n = taken
(v) (v)

10. 5.Genitive / Possessive suffix – ‘s
Father + s = Father’s
6.Comparative Degree suffix – r/er
Tall + er = Taller
7.Superlative Degree Suffix – st/est
Long + est = Longest

11. A derivational suffix is used to create a new word
from a free morpheme . This type of suffix
changes the grammatical category of a word. So
it is also called a class changing suffix .
Ex.
Management = This word has two
morphemes. The first morphemes is Manage and
it is a verb .
If the bound morpheme ment is added , We get a
new word – Management it is noun . So a verb is
change into a noun .

12.  There are few words in English which have the
same plural and singular form . The plural
morphemes present but it has no phonetic
shape . Its phonetic shape is zero so such a
morpheme or suffix is also called zero suffix.
 Ex:-
1.Cattle = There is a cattle .
There are some cattle .
2.Deer = I like a deer .
There are many deer .