Free morphemes can function independently as words (e.g.
town,
dog) and can appear within
lexemes (e.g.
town hall,
doghouse).
Bound morphemes appear only as parts of words, always in conjunction with a
root and sometimes with other bound morphemes. For example,
un- appears only accompanied by other morphemes to form a word. Most bound morphemes in English are
affixes, particularly
prefixes and
suffixes. Examples of suffixes are
-tion,
-ation,
-ible,
-ing, etc. Bound morphemes that are not affixes are called
cranberry morphemes.