morpheme vs. phoneme

morpheme vs. phoneme: What's the difference?

In linguistics, morpheme refers to a basic unit of meaning, while phoneme refers to a basic unit of sound. A morpheme is the smallest part of a word that still has its own independent meaning (for example, “words” has two morphemes, “word” and “s”). A phoneme is an independent sound that creates a contrast in meaning (for example, in English, “p” and “b,” as in “pit” and “bit,” are different phonemes because they cause a change in meaning).

morpheme

[mawr-feem] / ˈmɔr fim /

noun

Linguistics.

any of the minimal grammatical units of a language, each constituting a word or meaningful part of a word, that cannot be divided into smaller independent grammatical parts, as the, write, or the -ed of waited.

phoneme

[foh-neem] / ˈfoʊ nim /

noun

Linguistics.

any of a small set of units, usually about 20 to 60 in number, and different for each language, considered to be the basic distinctive units of speech sound by which morphemes, words, and sentences are represented. They are arrived at for any given language by determining which differences in sound function to indicate a difference in meaning, so that in English the difference in sound and meaning between pit and bit is taken to indicate the existence of different labial phonemes, while the difference in sound between the unaspirated p of spun and the aspirated p of pun, since it is never the only distinguishing feature between two different words, is not taken as ground for setting up two different p phonemes in English.