Principles of classification of English consonants and vowels Principles of classification of English consonants

A bound morpheme occurs only as a constituent part of a word.

Affixes are bound morphemes for they always make part of a word. For example, the suffixes -ness, -ship, -ize in the words darkness, friendship, to activize; the prefixes im-, dis-, de- in the words impolite, to disregard, to demobilize.

Some root-morphemes also belong to the class of bound morphemes. These are, as a rule, roots which are found in quite a limited number of words and never independently or pseudo-roots, i. e. root-morphemes which have lost most of the properties of "full" roots. Such are the root-morphemes goose- in gooseberry, -ceive in conceive.