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 (an affix) to a stem. Bound morphemes can’t stand alone, so prefixes and suffixes attach to a word to modify its meaning or its grammatical function, which is exactly what this description describes.

Inflection changes features like tense, number, or case without altering the core meaning or class of the word. Compounding combines two free words into a new word. Derivation is a type of affixation that often shifts the word’s part of speech or meaning, but the general process of attaching a bound morpheme to a stem is affixation.