Question

What type of morpheme changes the grammatical category of a word?

• A. Inflectional morpheme
• B. Free morpheme
• C. Derivational morpheme
• D. Root morpheme

Answer 1

Answer:

C. Derivational morpheme

A derivational morpheme is the type of morpheme that changes the grammatical category of a word; meaning it can change a word from one part of speech to another, like adding "-ness" to an adjective to create a noun (e.g., "kind" becomes "kindness"). 

• Changes word class:

  Unlike inflectional morphemes, which only add grammatical information without changing the word class, derivational morphemes can alter the part of speech of a word. 

• Creates new words:

  Adding a derivational morpheme often creates a new word with a slightly different meaning. 

• Examples:

  Prefixes like "un-" (unhappy), "re-" (rewrite), and suffixes like "-er" (teacher), "-ment" (movement).