noun

• 1Linguistics
  A meaningful morphological unit of a language that cannot be further divided (e.g. in, come, -ing, forming incoming).

  ‘In this approach, the specimen sentence has 13 monemes divided into 8 morphemes and 5 lexemes.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Cognitive Grammar takes the very strong position that all words and morphemes in a language are symbolic.’
  • ‘These include the order in which second language morphemes are acquired, learners' errors, and the stages of inter-language development.’
  • ‘Indeed, morphemes are meaningful, increasing in their salience, may be produced in isolation, and represent a more ‘natural’ cut on the language.’
  • ‘For the most part, native Japanese words and morphemes were associated with single Chinese characters, but not always.’

  1. 1.1A morphological element considered in respect of its functional relations in a linguistic system.
     ‘The model of morpheme classification assumes that there are three types of system morphemes (functional elements) as well as content morphemes.’
     More example sentences

     • ‘With respect to the plural morpheme, it is not only the case that it occurs very often in English text, but it also attaches to very many different noun stems.’
     • ‘Specifically, it is suggested that the meaning of the tense morphemes alone do not completely determine the temporal interpretation of a sentence.’
     • ‘Some attrition in morphology, plural and past irregular morphemes, in particular, is also observed.’