|
Correct Answer: -ed.
the teacher is instructing students on word parts to help them derive the meaning of the whole word. she is discussing bound morphemes. bound morphemes are those which cannot stand alone as words; they must be attached to other morphemes. examples include prefixes and suffixes.
of the options presented – dis-, -ed, -ful, and -less – the question asks which one is an inflectional suffix bound morpheme. inflectional morphemes are types of bound morphemes that modify a word's tense, number, aspect, mood, or gender without changing the word's class or meaning.
-dis- is a prefix, not a suffix, and it's used to negate or reverse the meaning of the word it precedes (e.g., like in "disagree"). -ful and -less are derivational suffixes; -ful turns a noun into an adjective indicating "having the qualities of" (e.g., "joyful"), and -less also turns a noun into an adjective meaning "without" (e.g., "hopeless").
-ed, on the other hand, is an inflectional suffix. it is used to indicate the past tense of regular verbs (e.g., "walked") and does not change the grammatical category from verb to another part of speech, nor does it alter the fundamental meaning of the word; it simply updates the word to express a completed action.
therefore, among the choices provided, -ed is the correct answer. it is the only inflectional suffix bound morpheme listed, demonstrating its role in grammar by inflecting verbs to express past tense.
|
