Category:Ojibwe bound morphemes

Bound morphemes are the smallest linguistic unit within a word that can carry a meaning. They can only occur when bound to a another morpheme.

Ojibwe is a polysynthetic language. Bound morphemes play many functions in Ojibwe's rich derivational morhoplogy, and can be classified into the following groups:

• Word stems can include the following stem-building elements:

  initials (often called roots) - convey a concrete meaning that is often rendered in English by an adjective or an adverb

  medials - an optional element that conveys information about things or kinds of things associated with the verb (classification, body part, etc.)

  finals - can have a concrete or abstract meaning, including information about what class of noun or verb the word is

• Preverbs are prefixed to a verb or noun stem, and can convey information about tense, mode, aspect, time, direction, etc. or can add lexical information.

• Personal prefixes can be prefixed to nouns or verbs

• Inflectional morphemes can be suffixed to:

  verbs, to indicate person, mood, order, etc

  nouns, to indicate number, focus, possession, and there are pejorative, locative, diminutive forms