What are single morphemes that cannot be further subdivided?

• A. Roots
• B. Derived words
• C. Multi-word units
• D. Lexical field

Answer: (A)

In morphology, the smallest meaningful units are morphemes. Among the free morphemes, the one that cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful parts is the root. The root carries the core lexical meaning of a word and serves as the base to which affixes attach to form new words. For example, in words like books or happier, the root is the base form that holds the core meaning (book, happy), while the plural or inflectional endings are bound morphemes added to that root. Derived words are built by attaching affixes to roots, but they themselves aren’t the unreducible unit. Multi-word units and lexical field refer to larger linguistic concepts rather than a single morpheme.