 A morpheme is defined as the minimal meaningful unit of a language.In a word such as "independently", the morphemes are said to be "in-", "de-", "pend", "-ent", and "-ly"; "pend" is the (bound) root and the other morphemes are, in this case, derivational affixes.In words such as "dogs", "dog" is the root and the "-s" is an inflectional morpheme.