Editing Bound and free morphemes (section)

==Word formation==

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Words can be formed purely from bound morphemes, as in English ''permit,'' ultimately from [[Latin]] {{Lang|la|[[wikt:per#Latin|per]]}} "through" + {{Lang|la|[[wikt:mitto#Latin|mittō]]}} "I send", where ''per-'' and ''-mit'' are bound morphemes in English. However, they are often thought of as simply a single morpheme. Per is not a bound morpheme; a bound morpheme, by definition, cannot stand alone as a word. Per is a standalone word as seen in the sentence, "I go to the gym twice per day."

A similar example is given in [[Chinese language|Chinese]]; most of its morphemes are monosyllabic and identified with a [[Chinese character]] because of the largely [[morphosyllabic]] script, but disyllabic words exist that cannot be analyzed into independent morphemes, such as 蝴蝶 ''húdié'' 'butterfly'. Then, the individual syllables and corresponding characters are used only in that word, and while they can be interpreted as bound morphemes 蝴 ''hú-'' and 蝶 ''-dié,'' it is more commonly considered a single disyllabic morpheme. See [[polysyllabic Chinese morpheme]]s for further discussion.

Linguists usually distinguish between [[productivity (linguistics)|productive]] and unproductive forms when speaking about morphemes. For example, the morpheme ''ten-'' in ''tenant'' was originally derived from the Latin word {{Lang|la|tenere}}, "to hold", and the same basic meaning is seen in such words as "tenable" and "intention." But as ''ten-'' is not used in English to form new words, most linguists would not consider it to be a morpheme at all.