A word can be broken up into several morphemes, which, as we learned in Section 1.1, are the smallest meaningful units of language. There is more than one kind of morpheme. In this section, we will learn about roots and affixes and about free and bound morphemes.

Roots, stems, and affixes

A root is the core morpheme of a word, while affixes are the morphemes that are attached to it. Some examples are shown in (1).

Words are built by starting with the root and adding one morpheme at a time. The piece of the word that hosts an affix at each stage is called the stem or the base.

Sometimes students mix up roots and stems. A root is always a single morpheme, but a stem may be complex, consisting of multiple morphemes. The root of a word does not change as you add more affixes, but the stem is different for each affix. Let’s consider the word declassifiable as an example, which contains four morphemes: de-, class, -ify, and -able, with the hierarchical structure shown in (2).

The root of the word declassifiable is class. The first affix that is attached to the root is -ify. The stem of -ify is the root class. Next, de- is attached; the stem of de- is the complex form classify. Finally, -able is affixed; the stem of -able is the complex form declassify.

As you can see, complex words like declassifiable are built from the inside out, starting with the root. Affixes are added to either edge of the root, one at a time. We will discuss more about how to determine which order affixes are attached in Chapter 11.

Free and bound morphemes

Another way we can classify morphemes is based on whether they are free or bound. A free morpheme can stand on its own, while a bound morpheme must always be attached to another morpheme. Some examples of free morphemes in English include library, think, blue, class, and couch. Some examples of bound morphemes in English include -s, -ify, -ed, in-, dis– and -ish.

We use hyphens to show whether a morpheme is free or bound. Free morphemes are not marked with hyphens while bound morphemes are marked with hyphens. The hyphens are always placed on the side of the affix that attaches to the stem.

Affixes should always have a hyphen. In some languages, like English, most roots are free and do not need a hyphen. In other languages, most roots are bound, and do need a hyphen. For example, in Spanish, most nouns are marked with a gender suffix. Since the roots cannot occur on their own without the gender suffix, these would be considered bound roots. Some examples, shown in (3), are the feminine noun casa ‘house’ which consists of the bound root cas- and the feminine suffix -a or the masculine noun cerezo ‘cherry’ which consists of the bound root cerez- and the masculine suffix -o.

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