What is the term for the smallest linguistic unit that has a meaning or grammatical function?

What is the term for the smallest linguistic unit that has a meaning or grammatical function?

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

Answer: (A)

Morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries meaning or a grammatical function. It can be a whole word or a bound piece added to another word to change meaning or tense, number, or part of speech. For example, in cats, there are two morphemes: cat (the free morpheme with the core meaning) and -s (the bound morpheme that marks plural). In unbelievable, un- and -able are bound morphemes that modify the base believe. Phoneme is about sound units, the smallest sounds that can distinguish meaning but don’t carry meaning by themselves. A syllable is a unit of pronunciation, a beat or chunk of sounds, not inherently meaningful. A lexeme is a word’s entry in the mental dictionary, representing a word family and its various forms, like run, runs, ran, running. So the term that matches the description is morpheme.

Morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries meaning or a grammatical function. It can be a whole word or a bound piece added to another word to change meaning or tense, number, or part of speech. For example, in cats, there are two morphemes: cat (the free morpheme with the core meaning) and -s (the bound morpheme that marks plural). In unbelievable, un- and -able are bound morphemes that modify the base believe.

Phoneme is about sound units, the smallest sounds that can distinguish meaning but don’t carry meaning by themselves. A syllable is a unit of pronunciation, a beat or chunk of sounds, not inherently meaningful. A lexeme is a word’s entry in the mental dictionary, representing a word family and its various forms, like run, runs, ran, running.

So the term that matches the description is morpheme.