Questions: Morphological Structure

Question 1

The word 'unbreakable' contains how many morphemes?

• A. 1 (it is one word)
• B. 2 (un- and breakable)
• C. 3 (un-, break, -able)
• D. 4 (un-, break, a-, -ble)

Answer: (C)

'un-' is a bound morpheme (negation prefix), 'break' is a free morpheme (base), and '-able' is a bound morpheme (suffix meaning 'capable of'). The word has three morphemes, not four — '-able' is a single morpheme, not two. This illustrates how morpheme boundaries do not align with syllable boundaries.

Question 2

The word 'button' has two syllables and therefore two morphemes.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

'Button' has two syllables (but-ton) but only one morpheme — it cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts. Syllables are units of phonological structure; morphemes are units of meaning. These two analyses are independent of each other.

Question 3

What is the test for determining whether two words share a morpheme rather than just coincidentally similar sounds?

Model answer: The shared form must also carry a shared meaning or grammatical function across both words. Sound similarity alone is not enough — the 'un-' in 'uncle' sounds like the prefix 'un-' (meaning 'not') but contributes no negation meaning, so it is not the same morpheme.

Morphemes are form-meaning pairings. This prevents false segmentation of words like 'uncle', 'carpet', or 'butter', where familiar-looking sequences lack the corresponding meaning. Applying the meaning test consistently is the core skill in morphological analysis.