A morpheme that cannot stand alone, such as -ing or -ful, is called what?

• A. Bound morpheme
• B. Free morpheme
• C. Idiom
• D. Parsing

Answer: (A)

Bound morphemes are units of meaning that cannot stand alone as words. Endings like -ing and -ful attach to a base word to modify its meaning or form, but by themselves they don’t form independent words. For example, talk + ing becomes talking, and care + ful becomes careful. Free morphemes, in contrast, can stand alone as words (talk, care). An idiom is a fixed expression with figurative meaning, and parsing is the process of analyzing sentence structure, not a type of morpheme. So the described morpheme is a bound morpheme.