The aspects of language

Language consists of two aspects namely form and meaning. In relation to meaning, the smallest meaningful unit in language is morpheme. Morpheme is defined as the smallest meaningful unit of a language (Lim Kiat Boey, 1975 : 37). Words are made up of morphemes. The word teachers, for example, consists of three meaningful units or morphemes, teach, –er, and –s. The morpheme teach forming the word teachers has the lexical meaning; the morpheme –er means the doer of teaching; the morpheme –s has plural meaning. We can identify the meaning of the morpheme teach although it stands alone but we cannot identify the meaning of morphemes –er and –s in isolation. We can identify the meaning of the morpheme –er and –s after they combine to the morpheme teach. The morphemes which can meaningfully stand alone are called free morphemes while the morphemes such as –er and –s, which cannot meaningfully stand alone are called bound morphemes. Bound morphemes must be attached to free morphemes. Bound morphemes are also called affixes which can be classified into prefix, infix, and suffix. English only has two kinds of bound morphemes namely prefixes and suffixes. There are not infixes in English. Bound morphemes are classified into two namely derivational and inflectional morphemes.