What is morphemic analysis?

Morphemic analysis is the process of identifying the smallest meaningful units of language, called morphemes, that make up words. A morpheme is a subword unit that carries grammatical meaning. For example, the word "dog" has one morpheme, while the word "dogs" has two morphemes: "dog" and "s." The "s" morpheme indicates that the word is plural.

Morphemic analysis can be used to identify the root word of a word, as well as any affixes that have been added to the word. For example, the root word of the word "uncomfortable" is "comfort," and the affixes are "un-" and "-able." The "un-" affix indicates that the word is the opposite of "comfortable," and the "-able" affix indicates that the word is an adjective.

Morphemic analysis can also be used to identify homographs, which are words that are spelled the same but have different meanings. For example, the word "bank" can be a noun (a financial institution) or a verb (to tilt or slope). The morphemic analysis of "bank" as a noun is "bank," while the morphemic analysis of "bank" as a verb is "bank + s." The "s" morpheme indicates that the word is a verb.