Editing Lexeme (section)

== Decomposition ==
A language's lexemes are often composed of smaller units with individual meaning called [[morpheme]]s, according to [[Root (linguistics)|root morpheme]] + [[Morphological derivation|derivational morphemes]] + [[affix]] (not necessarily in that order), where:
* The root morpheme is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced to smaller constituents.<ref>{{cite web |url = https://glossary.sil.org/term/root |title = SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms: What is a Root? |website = Sil.org |date = 3 December 2015 |access-date=2021-05-14}}</ref>
* The derivational morphemes carry only [[Morphological derivation|derivational]] information.<ref>{{cite web |url = https://glossary.sil.org/term/derivational-affix |title = SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms: What is a Derivational Affix? |website = Sil.org |date = 3 December 2015 |access-date=2021-05-14}}</ref>
* The [[affix]] is composed of all inflectional morphemes, and carries only [[inflection]]al information.<ref>{{cite web |url = https://glossary.sil.org/term/inflectional-affix |title = SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms: What is an Inflectional Affix? |website = Sil.org |date = 3 December 2015 |access-date=2021-05-14}}</ref>

The compound root morpheme + derivational morphemes is often called the [[stem (linguistics)|stem]].<ref>{{cite web |url = https://glossary.sil.org/term/stem |title = SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms: What is a Stem? |website = Sil.org |date = 3 December 2015 |access-date=2021-05-14}}</ref> The decomposition stem + [[wikt:desinence|desinence]] can then be used to study inflection.