Which linguistic unit is a minimal unit of meaning?

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

Answer: (A)

The concept being tested is that morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a language. A morpheme carries a specific meaning or grammatical function and can’t be divided into smaller parts without losing that meaning. For example, in the word cats, there are two morphemes: cat, which refers to the animal, and -s, which marks plural. Some morphemes stand alone (free morphemes), while others must attach to other elements (bound morphemes), but each carries meaning or a grammatical role.

Think of how this differs from other units. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can distinguish words, but it does not carry meaning by itself. A grapheme is a written symbol or letter that represents sounds or morphemes in writing, yet it isn’t a unit of meaning on its own. An allomorph is a variant pronunciation of the same morpheme, where meanings stay the same even though the sound changes.

Since the focus here is on units that convey meaning, the minimal meaningful unit is the morpheme.