What is the term for a short segment of language that meets three criteria?

• A. Allomorph
• B. Phoneme
• C. Morpheme
• D. Grapheme

Answer: (C)

The term being tested is morpheme—the smallest unit of meaning in a language. A morpheme carries meaning and cannot be divided into smaller parts that have independent meaning. It can be a whole word, like book, which can stand alone as a free morpheme, or a prefix/suffix, like -ed or -s, which are bound morphemes that modify tense or number. When you put morphemes together, you create words with new meanings or grammatical functions.

Other terms describe different things. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in speech and has no inherent meaning by itself. A grapheme is a written unit that represents a sound or a combination of sounds. An allomorph is a variant form of the same morpheme that appears in different contexts but does not become a separate meaning unit on its own.