base or affix

[buianh]

Dear all,
I am have trouble with C-BB and C-FB in 2 words morpheme and phoneme. I can divide each them into 2 morphemes:
- morpheme : morph(-) ??? + -eme
- phoneme : phon- + -eme
As far as we know, phon- is the prefix meaning "sound", thus -eme is a bound base meaning "significant contrastive unit"
=> morph- is the prefix , but my teacher said that it is a base. Could you tell me it is correct or incorrect?
Best regards,

 

[BobK]

Why does phon- have to be a prefix? Has you teacher said it is?

b

 

[buianh]

Why does phon- have to be a prefix? Has you teacher said it is?

b

Yes, she did. If it is a prefix, what is kind of phon- in the word cacophony? I've still doubted that.

 

[BobK]

It is a thing ('free lexeme' - I'm not sure of this stuff any more); 'caco-' is a prefix meaning bad.

Generally, prefixes denote either adjectives (caco- etc.) or adverbs 'eu-' etc. or prepositions - by far the most well-populated class: peri-, pre-, post-, sub-, super-, infra-, ante-, anti-, contra-, counter-, ultra-, hyper- etc. etc. etc. (be careful of trying to make hard-and-fast divisions here though - some prefixes have more than one role - in 'supernumerary' super- is prepositional, but in 'Superman' it's adjectival).

I can't think why your teacher classified 'phon-' as a prefix. I hesitate to say she's wrong though - maybe it's like my super- examples - it can perform various roles.

b