Talk:Morpheme

message: I think there are 2 views here that are being combined in this entry. There are linguists that would only include as  morphemes, a unit of "grammatical meaning," like plural markers, past tense markers etc. Others would include as morphemes, any unit of "meaning," like "find," "book," etc. In introducing "meaning" into the concept of  morpheme, one also introduces a subjective element and context-sensitive element.
I am not sure that one can combine these approaches.
Dictionary definitions are rarely helpful here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RoseParks (talk • contribs) 15:06, 15 May 2001
*I'm also very leary of combining Morphological analysis and Lexical analysis, as is implied by saying morphemes combine to form lexemes.  We are definitely treading too far from the Neutral Perspective in that statement. I know linguists (non-Chomsky to be sure) who would read this and consider it an aberration. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Conversion script (talk • contribs) 15:43, 25 February 2002
This The morpheme plural-s has the morph "-s" in cats ([kæts]), but "-es" in dishes ([diʃɪz]), and even the soft s, [z], in dogs ([dogz]). These are the allomorphs of "-s". It might even change entirely into -ren in children. is from Spencer, morphology. FlammingoHey 09:45, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wrong. 'able' is a free morpheme, yes. It means "capable of doing something". But '-able' is a bound morpheme, in fact meaning the opposite - it means "capable of having the preceding action done to it". Hence, "breakable" means "able to BE broken", not "able to break". The bound morpheme reverses the voice and describes the passive action, not the active. ghostmoonEVPhauntings 02:19, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: POV

message: This encyclopaedic entry cannot be considered accurate unless outstanding issues have been addressed.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jp adelaide (talk • contribs) 14:45, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Serious Review Required 

message: Include the root of the word Morpheme (New Testament Greek?) and the linguistics schools it applies and does not apply to. Include links to other linguistic topics based around morphemes and the philosophy of linguistic study.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jp adelaide (talk • contribs) 14:53, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition needs more detail 

message: In the article the morpheme "-able" in the word "unbreakable" is described as a bound morpheme. I would suggest that isn't the case: the morpheme "able" is a free morpheme such as "break", as it can be a word of its own, a synonymous of "capable". manu3d (talk) 15:10, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The connection between the adjective suffix (often spelled "-ible" and never stressed in normally-connected speech) and the separate word "able" is somewhat remote in modern English... AnonMoos (talk) 01:55, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Able a free or bound morpheme? 

message: Bound_morpheme and Free_morpheme should both be merged into this article. It's not very long as-is, and the free and bound pages are both stubs. Nyoro n (talk) 19:49, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  merges? 

message: is the set of all English words W a subset of all English morphemes M?  In other words, is W\subset{M}?  Are there any words that are not morphemes?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.34.40.3 (talk) 00:22, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: (Sorry, I don't know how to indent.  If another editor who reads this does, please indent what's to follow, and delete this parenthetical comment.)  No.  According to a morpheme-based analysis, "kid" is one morpheme, and "kids" is two (the first morpheme is "kid", and the second is "-s").  Each of these, though, is only one word.  76.93.41.50 (talk) 08:13, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: You put colons in front of it. No, as some words are not morphemes:words, for. Meanwhile, some morphemes are not words:un- anti- dis- -ism, etc24.17.191.208 (talk) 02:55, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Words a subset of Morphemes? 

message: I would actually delete it, only I don't want the header deleted.  It would be nice to include a description of what morphological analysis is in this article.  Unfortunately what is currently under the header "Morphological Analysis" is a description of a few very specific computational analysis systems employed by what looks like one or two Asian universities.  If this has a place in Wikipedia, it's not here.  76.93.41.50 (talk) 08:17, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Morphological Analysis Must Be Drastically Modified 

message: The introduction is too confusing. I did not understand what a morpheme was until I read the Wiktionary definition:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/morpheme --98.203.152.242 (talk) 05:55, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Really? because they're worded very similarly.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 06:01, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction too confusing 

message: It is ironic that a page on a linguistic theme is written in so mediocre and awkward a style. Here are my criticisms: If no one objects, I will return and fix the page up later (unless someone else does it in the interim, which might be a good idea, because I am not an expert in this field). 
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest component of word, or other linguistic unit, that has semantic meaning.
This should read “of a word”, not “of word”.  And, as you are pointing to something, “which” would serve better than “that”. 
A morpheme is composed by phoneme(s) (the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound) in spoken language, and by grapheme(s) (the smallest units of written language) in written language.
I gather “is composed by phoneme(s)” should properly read “is composed of phoneme(s)”, and thus “and by” later in the same sentence would become “and of”. It's a clumsy construction anyway. Perhaps something like: "When a morpheme is spoken, it is called a phoneme, and when written, a grapheme. Phonemes and graphemes are the smallest distinctive units used in language."  
The concept of word and morpheme are different, a morpheme may or may not stand alone.
This is a pretty appalling definition! It would confuse any reader who was a novice in this area. How does the second part of this sentence relate to the first? The sentence tells you that “word” and “morpheme” are different concepts, but then goes on to say of a morpheme that it “may or may not stand alone”. This implies that, in the case of “words”,  they MAY NOT “may or may not stand alone”, which is nonsense.  
A morpheme is free if it can stand alone (ex: "one", "possible"),... 
Look, call me an old fuddy duddy, but last time I checked it was the abbreviation “e.g.” which signified that examples were to follow. I should have thought that any aspiring linguist would remember that “ex” means “from”, or “out of”. That is, any aspiring linguist familiar with the use of “e.g., which would include most 12 year olds. Just weird. 
It gets better:
Its actual phonetic representation is the morph, with the different morphs ("in-", "im-") representing the same morpheme being grouped as its allomorphs.
Wtf is an “ACTUAL” phonetic representation”? You mean the real one as opposed to some phony interloper trying to pass itself off as one. And in the sentence preceding this one, we were told that words were made up of free or bound morphemes. Now, suddenly they are made up of “morphs” which are their “actual phonetic representations”. Whaaaa? And there is a link from the morph mentioned there to its own page. Great! Try going there. You get a kidult article on the Power Rangers, with a 6 word reference to the linguistic use of the word in the category of Miscellanea, right at the end. And the morph mentioned there is linked to…guess…Yep, to right back here. Someone’s not doing their homework. The sentence then segues into something about allomorphs, but it too is badly phrased and confusing. 
The word "unbreakable" has three morphemes: "un-", a bound morpheme; "break", a free morpheme; and "-able", a bound morpheme.
Yep, there would be about two hundred million words with three morphemes the author could have chosen to illustrate the point concerning free and bound morphemes, and the one he chooses is “unbreakable”, which has a meaning to do with being free or bound on an entirely different level. This could well confuse the reader (further) as to whether the word’s MEANING is somehow connected to the word’s linguistic CONSTRUCTION. 
 
"un-" is also a prefix, "-able" is a suffix. Both "un-" and "-able" are affixes.
Ah, no Joe, not "actually"... What you mean is that both prefixes AND suffixes are part of a more general category: affixes. It is only by virtue of that fact, that “un-“and “-able” are affixes. And in any case, is it REALLY necessary to go into this here?  Nothing here tells you why this matter is being broached.
Look, there’s lots more, but I’m getting weary of it. Making this list probably consumes more of my time than would just rewriting this alphabet spaghetti farrago from scratch. Like many other WP articles there are just far too many links to associated subjects. Of course, those links should be there somewhere, but it is bad pedagogical practice to point a reader to another, possibly very involved article without trying to give a brief and cogent précis of how it bears on the current matter, that is, a short DEFINITION should be provided in the current article, so that a reader can understand what is going on, and can move to the other pages LATER, not right now. In general, it is good practice to confine most of the links to the end, as “Further Reading”, and restrict one’s remit to providing  a brief, succinct and comprehensible outline, one which can largely stand on its own.  That’s often difficult, and that is why the natural ability to COMMUNICATE is such an important element in such writing, and why LEAVING A LOT OF STUFF OUT, is another, as is DEFINING STUFF WHEN IT IS FIRST MENTIONED, NOT TWO PARAGRAPHS DOWN, and READING YOUR STUFF WHILE STANDING IN THE SHOES OF THE LAY READER AND MAKING GOOD GUESSES AS TO WHAT MIGHT CONFUSE HIM OR HER, as is observing that wonderful rule THE SECRET OF GOOD WRITING IS REWRITING. Point made? 
This whole thing finishes with some bullshit about “segmenting sentences” in Japanese, Chinese “and other languages”. What, you mean “other Asiatic languages”?  Because, if you don’t, then why would you pick those two?  And “segmenting” is one of those weird words in English that can have two meanings, one the EXACT opposite of the other. Something like “husk” it can mean pulling sentences apart, or it can mean putting sentences together. It’s an appropriate way to end this Alice in Wonderland mess. Which is unfair to Alice in Wonderland) which was fun (and which gave us portmanteau). Myles325a (talk) 07:18, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  COMPLETE rewrite required.  

message: Carrying neither semantic nor grammatical information, is an interfix (like -o- in speedometer) a morpheme at all?  I suppose one could argue that it carries derivation information—"these two words, despite not working well together phonologically, are joined in a compound".  If not, is it the only case of a nonmorphemic speech sound?  (I just found this) — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 18:36, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: In Greek, -o- was a "thematic" vowel associated with certain kinds of stems, but which didn't have any real semantic function (though it could be considered to mark the fact that compounding has taken place). "Empty morphs" have long been recognized in linguistic theories, though there doesn't seem to be anything on Wikipedia about them... AnonMoos (talk) 02:06, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interfix 

message: I'm tempted to remove entirely the section on morphological analysis. It's technically relevant to the general article topic, but it's a very specific offshoot whose details would make more sense if presented in an article about related technology (e.g. in natural language processing). Thoughts? Armadillopteryxtalk 20:36, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Morphological analysis 

message: "Morphemes are not necessarily semantic units." What does this sentence from the article mean? That morphemes need not bear any meaning (this would go against the very definition of "morpheme" that I learned)? Or is the real content in this sentence hidden in the word "unit"? Only linking to the article "semantics" does not seem very helpful. --Mudd1 (talk) 23:18, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think it's explained very well in the article, but morphemes are the basic recognizable recurring units in word-formation (inflection, derivation, and compounding), and there's not always a simple correspondence between morphemes and meaning (as with the Greek -o- which occurs between the two members of a compound, discussed above). AnonMoos (talk) 02:38, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the clarification. I still learned that morphemes are the smallest units to carry meaning but that was in German linguistics and maybe outdated. --Mudd1 (talk) 15:57, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: They can be the smallest units to carry meaning, but that doesn't mean that every single occurrence of every single morpheme has an assignable meaning.  Linguists of the 1950s spoke of "empty morphs", and the term is still occasionally used today, though there doesn't appear to be anything on Wikipedia... AnonMoos (talk) 14:36, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  What's a semantic unit? 

message: Able is a free morpheme. As a suffix, it means capable to be done. As a word, it means the same thing.
The crockery was unbreakable. 
and
The crockery was not able to be broken.
both mean the same thing.
--Deonyi (talk) 06:08, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Able 

message: Substituted at 00:26, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: I was reviewing references and discovered some of them need to be updated. The link to Reference 2.Morphology Classification Of Morphemes no longer works. A current link or a new reference is needed. Reference 5.Language files: Materials for an introduction to language and linguistics (11th ed.) has a newer edition so it could be updated if deemed necessary. I think all sections need review of citation not just what is listed on page. Sections could include more citations such as in the section Classification of Morphemes. The list of references is short which leads me to believe that a variety of other resources and research are needed. Rachelellen31 (talk) 19:43, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  References and Citations 

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thread_title:  External links modified (February 2018) 

message: Moneme currently redirects to this article, but isn't mentioned in the article. There are separate articles on it in various other language versions of Wikipedia (e.g. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monème , https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monema , https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monema (as shown on the wikidata entry: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1944382 )), and while I don't speak any of those languages well enough to translate them and add the results to this article, my general understanding is that "moneme" is a term referring to a very similar concept to morpheme, pretty much only used by a single linguist, André Martinet (1908 - 1999). Even though it's a pretty rare term, we should probably still have a sentence about it in the article, just to avoid confusion. JesseW, the juggling janitor 03:01, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mention of moneme 

message: — Assignment last updated by Cubellod (talk) 05:35, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: Linguistics in the Digital Age

message: Is there any reason the "Zero-bound morpheme" section exists on this article? It seems redundant, considering the "zero morpheme" section listed right underneath it. There is also no actual information underneath this header besides a notice stating that a merger occurred on this article, and reformatting may be needed. I imagine then it would be appropriate to remove this section? 
--Cubellod (talk) 04:58, 15 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zero-morpheme vs Zero-bound-morpheme section