The morpheme within the field of grammar is the minimum unit that has a grammatical meaning, among which can be named: no, yes, the, etc. So the morpheme must be understood as a dependent moneme which in turn can express a meaning. The morpheme must be attached to a lexeme so that it can be modified and the word has a meaning.
It could be said that the morpheme is the variable part of a word, which is composed, from the grammatical point of view, by morphemes and lexemes. The morpheme provides the grammatical value and is always associated with the lexeme, which has a semantic value. Both the morpheme and the lexeme can be divided into phonemes, the minimal units of phonology that have no meaning (either grammatical or semantic).
It is common to talk about what are grammatical morphemes. These can be established that can be divided into two large groups. So, in particular, we find the following:
- Gender morphemes. They are those that, as their name indicates, help us to know if the word in question before us is masculine or feminine.
- Number morphemes. In their case, what they do is help us to know if a word is singular or plural.
The use of suffixes and prefixes is what allows us to know the internal structure of words or morphology. The discipline that studies morphology is linguistics. Consequently, knowledge of morphemes must be located within morphology. Morphology literally means "word form." This implies that the object of study of morphology is the word, that is, its internal structure and the variations that affect it.
For example, in the word children, the lexeme is “niñ”, while “o” tells us that it is masculine and “s” indicates that it is plural “;” Or "and" s "are morphemes. Verbal endings, serve to determine their person, mode, time and number.
Among morphemes, several types can be distinguished based on the way they are attached to the word:
- The independent morphemes or clitic morphemes are those that accept a certain phonological independence with respect to the lexeme (such as prepositions, conjunctions and determiners).
- Dependent morphemes or linked morphemes, on the other hand, are always linked to another moneme to complete their meaning. There are two subtypes of dependent morphemes: derivatives (which add nuances to meaning and act in different semantic fields) and inflections (indicate accidents and grammatical relationships).
- Derivative-dependent morphemes, on the other hand, can be classified into prefixes (they are prefixed to the lexeme), infixes (they have no semantic content), or suffixes (they are postponed to the lexeme).
- Finally, free morphemes are those that can appear as independent words. For example: light, sea, peace, flower, sun.
