<P> A morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language . A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word, by definition, is freestanding . The linguistics field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology . When a morpheme stands by itself, it is considered as a root because it has a meaning of its own (e.g. the morpheme cat) and when it depends on another morpheme to express an idea, it is an affix because it has a grammatical function (e.g. the--s in cats to indicate that it is plural). Every word comprises one or more morphemes . </P> <Table> <Tr> <Th> Examples </Th> </Tr> <Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> "Unbreakable" comprises three morphemes: un - (a bound morpheme signifying "not"), - break - (the root, a free morpheme), and - able (a free morpheme signifying "can be done"). </Li> <Li> Allomorphs of the plural morpheme for regular nouns: / s / (e.g. in cats / kæts /), / ɪz, əz / (e.g. in dishes / dɪʃɪz /), and / z / (e.g. in dogs / dɒɡz /). </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> </Table>

A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning found in a word. true false