How many morphemes are in the following sentence?
The boys and girls are running up and down the block.
What do you mean about this?
Counting morphemes
I counted 14
To determine the number of morphemes in a sentence, we need to break it down into individual words and identify the morphemes within each word. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of language, such as prefixes, suffixes, and root words.
Let's analyze each word in the given sentence:
1. The - 1 morpheme
2. boys - 1 morpheme (no prefixes, suffixes, or root words)
3. and - 1 morpheme
4. girls - 1 morpheme (no prefixes, suffixes, or root words)
5. are - 1 morpheme
6. running - 2 morphemes (run is the root word, and -ing is a suffix)
7. up - 1 morpheme
8. and - 1 morpheme
9. down - 1 morpheme
10. the - 1 morpheme
11. block - 1 morpheme (no prefixes, suffixes, or root words)
Adding them up, we have a total of 10 morphemes in the sentence "The boys and girls are running up and down the block."