What is the smallest unit of meaning in language?

What is the smallest unit of meaning in language?

• A. Phoneme
• B. Lexeme
• C. Morpheme
• D. Grapheme

Answer: (C)

A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in language. It can be a whole word by itself, like cat or happy, or a piece that must attach to a word, like the plural suffix -s in cats or the prefix un- in unhappy or the suffix -ness in happiness. These pieces carry semantic content or grammatical function, and multiple morphemes can combine to form more complex words. By contrast, a phoneme is about sound units that distinguish words but carry no meaning on their own, and a grapheme is a written unit that represents sounds or words rather than meaning itself. A lexeme refers to the set of forms that share a core meaning (like run, runs, ran, running), but the smallest units that actually encode meaning are morphemes.

A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in language. It can be a whole word by itself, like cat or happy, or a piece that must attach to a word, like the plural suffix -s in cats or the prefix un- in unhappy or the suffix -ness in happiness. These pieces carry semantic content or grammatical function, and multiple morphemes can combine to form more complex words. By contrast, a phoneme is about sound units that distinguish words but carry no meaning on their own, and a grapheme is a written unit that represents sounds or words rather than meaning itself. A lexeme refers to the set of forms that share a core meaning (like run, runs, ran, running), but the smallest units that actually encode meaning are morphemes.