Editing Word (section)

==Morphology==
{{main|Morphology (linguistics)}}
[[File:Independently morphology tree.png|thumbnail|A morphology tree of the English word "independently"]]

Morphology is the study of [[word formation]] and structure. Words may undergo different morphological processes which are traditionally classified into two broad groups: [[Morphological derivation|derivation]] and [[inflection]]. Derivation is a process in which a new word is created from existing ones, with an adjustment to its meaning and often with a change of word class. For example, in English the verb ''to convert'' may be modified into the noun ''a convert'' through stress shift and into the adjective ''convertible'' through affixation. Inflection adds grammatical information to a word, such as indicating case, tense, or gender.{{r|Fasold2006|p=73}}

In [[synthetic language]]s, a single [[word stem]] (for example, ''love'') may inflect to have a number of different forms (for example, ''loves'', ''loving'', and ''loved''). However, for some purposes these are not usually considered to be different words, but rather different forms of the same word. In these languages, words may be considered to be constructed from a number of [[morpheme]]s.

In [[Indo-European languages]] in particular, the morphemes distinguished are:
* the [[root (linguistics)|root]]
* multiple possible [[Adfix|adfixes]]
* an inflectional [[suffix]].
Thus, the Proto-Indo-European ''{{PIE|*wr̥dhom}}'' would be analyzed as consisting of
# ''{{PIE|*wr̥-}}'', the [[zero grade]] of the root ''{{PIE|*wer-}}''.
# A root-extension ''{{PIE|*-dh-}}'' (diachronically a suffix), resulting in a complex root ''{{PIE|*wr̥dh-}}''.
# The [[thematic suffix]] ''{{PIE|*-o-}}''.
# The [[neuter gender]] nominative or accusative singular suffix ''{{PIE|*-m}}''.