Morphology deals with the internal
structure of words. A simple word in Mishmi is a minimally meaningful free
form which when segmented will have no more than one free form.
(i)
/myą/ `wife’ which is an
unsegmented free form.
(ii)
/myąwčlą/
`wives’ which when gives one free form /myą/ and one bound form /- wčlą/.
By definition both (i) and (ii)
constitute words whereas /-wčlą/
does not by itself constitute a word and is called a suffix.
From a morphological point of view, a
Mishmi word must contain at least one stem. A stem is a minimally meaningful
free form which is capable of taking one or more inflexional suffixes. And
hence stems of varying degrees of complexity are possible (Ref. Inner
Structure of Noun and Verb). While most stems can occur overtly unmodified
as free forms and therefore function as words, by far the largest number of
words consist of a stem with a number of morphological processes (Ref.
2.0.3).
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