Assignment #1

      I think the English words forbid, forget, forgive, forgo, forswear are all examples of complex verbs.  This is due to the fact that complex words can be broken down into more than one morpheme. We know that a morpheme contains both form and meaning. These words share the same prefix for- which means to have and this shows it can stand alone. It attaches to words that also portray meaning alone: “bid”, “get”, “give”, “go”, and “swear”. An example of what a simplex word would be is the word “forum”. This word only has one morpheme and can not be simplified any smaller. Although this word shares the same prefix for- it still differs because ‘um’ does not have significant meaning. However, I was still confused as to whether these verbs are systematically related. I don’t think these words relate systematically because they all contain different endings. Can you please clarify?

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