The morphological process of adding a bound morpheme to the stem of a word to modify its meaning or class is called what?

The morphological process of adding a bound morpheme to the stem of a word to modify its meaning or class is called what?

• A. Affixation
• B. Derivation
• C. Inflection
• D. Compounding

Answer: (A)

Affixation is the process of attaching a bound morpheme to a stem. By adding prefixes or suffixes, you modify the word’s meaning or its grammatical category, creating a new form. This is distinct from inflection, which mainly signals grammatical features (like tense or number) without changing the word’s class, and from compounding, which combines two free words. Derivation is closely related, since it often uses affixes to form new words, but affixation is the broader process of attaching affixes to a base. So the act described is affixation.

Affixation is the process of attaching a bound morpheme to a stem. By adding prefixes or suffixes, you modify the word’s meaning or its grammatical category, creating a new form. This is distinct from inflection, which mainly signals grammatical features (like tense or number) without changing the word’s class, and from compounding, which combines two free words. Derivation is closely related, since it often uses affixes to form new words, but affixation is the broader process of attaching affixes to a base. So the act described is affixation.