After reading last week’s reading, I’ve understood that simplex words are words that can’t be decomposed any further into smaller units. Meaning a simplex word, has no affixes. So, another word cannot form out of the original word and stand on its own, but can only into sound segments. On the other hand we have complex words, which are words that can be decomposed into smaller constituents, and can stand on its own. Meaning, these are words that can be broken down. Like for example “football” – it can be decomposed into “foot” and “ball” and each word can stand alone, and have its own meaning. The verbs forbid, forget, forgive, forgo, and forswear are all examples of complex words. Each one of these verbs can be broken down into smaller constituents. In each verb that was given, there are two morphemes indicated. The first morpheme being “for” which is a prefix for all the verbs that were given. The second morpheme for each of the following words would be “bid”, “get”, “give”, “go”, and “swear” and these would all be considered the suffixes to each verb.


