Question

What is a base in morphology?

• A. A type of phonetic expression used in language
• B. A grammatical rule governing verb tense
• C. A morpheme or combination of morphemes to which affixes can be added
• D. A literary device used in poetry

Answer 1

Answer:

C. A morpheme or combination of morphemes to which affixes can be added

• In morphology, a base is the core part of a word to which inflectional (like "-s", "-ed") or derivational (like "-ness", "-hood") suffixes can be attached.
  For example:

  • hot → hotter (inflectional)

  • boy → boyhood (derivational)