morpheme

A morpheme is the smallest unit of a language that conveys meaning. The word cats contains two morphemes: cat (ie., a furry animal that says, "meow") and -s (i.e., more than one). In this example, there are two different kinds of morphemes. Cat is a free morpheme because it can stand on its own as a word. The plural suffix -s is a bound morpheme since it must be affixed to other morphemes and cannot occur alone.

Relevance to Cued Speech

 

Signing systems