Which concept studies word formation and structure?

• A. Morphology
• B. Morphemes
• C. Plot Pyramid
• D. Guided Reading

Answer: (A)

Word formation and structure is studied by morphology. Morphology analyzes how words are built from smaller meaningful units called morphemes—like roots, prefixes, and suffixes—and how those pieces combine to create new words or change meaning. For example, adding un- to a word like happy changes the meaning to its opposite, and adding -ness turns an adjective into a noun. It also explains tense, number, and other grammatical changes through different morphemes.

A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning, while morphology is the field that explains how those units come together to form words and alter their meaning. The other terms here don’t focus on word construction: one refers to smaller units of meaning themselves, while the remaining two relate to story structure and reading instruction rather than word formation.