Which term refers to grammatical markers that indicate tense, number, possession, or comparison?

Which term refers to grammatical markers that indicate tense, number, possession, or comparison?

• A. Derivational Morphemes
• B. Inflectional Morphemes
• C. Inflected Morphemes
• D. Bound Morphemes

Answer: (B)

Inflectional morphemes are the grammatical markers that indicate tense, number, possession, or comparison. They attach to a word to express these grammatical features without changing the word’s basic meaning or its part of speech. For example, -ed marks past tense as in walked; -s marks plural as in cats (and can mark third-person singular present as in walks); -'s shows possession as in the student’s book; -er and -est express comparison as in taller and tallest. This differs from derivational morphemes, which create new words or change the word’s part of speech (happy → happiness, teach → teacher). While all inflectional and derivational morphemes are bound morphemes (they can’t stand alone), the specific markers described here are inflectional morphemes.

Inflectional morphemes are the grammatical markers that indicate tense, number, possession, or comparison. They attach to a word to express these grammatical features without changing the word’s basic meaning or its part of speech. For example, -ed marks past tense as in walked; -s marks plural as in cats (and can mark third-person singular present as in walks); -'s shows possession as in the student’s book; -er and -est express comparison as in taller and tallest. This differs from derivational morphemes, which create new words or change the word’s part of speech (happy → happiness, teach → teacher). While all inflectional and derivational morphemes are bound morphemes (they can’t stand alone), the specific markers described here are inflectional morphemes.