Morphemes in “nationality”
“nationality” has 3 morphemes: nation + -al + -ity.
Spelling changes when the parts join: the boxes show the letters as written; the morphemes themselves are nation + -al + -ity.
Each morpheme explained
| Morpheme | Type | Free / bound | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| nation | free root | free | a politically organized body of people under a single government |
| -al | derivational suffix | bound | relating to, of the kind of |
| -ity | derivational suffix | bound | quality or condition of |
How the word is built
nation → national → nationality
Each step adds one affix to the word before it; the root “nation” is where the chain starts.
Morphemes are not syllables
Morphemes are units of meaning; syllables are units of sound. The boundaries often fall in different places, which is why “nationality” splits one way for a morphology exercise and another for a syllable count.
Break any word into morphemes
Prefixes, roots and suffixes with glosses, free and in your browser.
Open the morphological analyzer →Related words
Segmentation derived from MorphyNet (Batsuren, Bella & Giunchiglia, 2021; CC BY-SA 3.0, built from Wiktionary), with hand-written affix glosses and root meanings from WordNet. Reviewed for classroom use; tell us if you spot an error.