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The word is the fundamental unit of language, it has form and content. Linguists define the word as the smallest free form found in language. Words have an internal structure consisting of smaller units organized with respect to each other in a particular way. The most important component of word structure is the morpheme (Greek morphe "form" + -eme "the smallest distinctive unit") — the smallest unit of language that carries information about meaning or function. The word builder, for example, consists of two morphemes: build (with the meaning of "construct") and -er (which indicates that the entire word functions as a noun with the meaning "one who builds"). Similarly, the word houses is made up of the morphemes house (with the meaning of "dwelling") and -s (with the meaning "more than one"). Some words consist of a single morpheme. For example, the word train cannot be divided into smaller parts (say, trand ain or t and rain) that carry information about its meaning or function. Such words are said to be simple words and are distinguished from complex words, which contain two or more morphemes.

It is important to keep in mind that a morpheme is neither a meaning nor a stretch of sound, but a meaning and a stretch of sound joined together. Morphemes are usually arbitrary — there is no natural connection between their sound and their meaning. Thus, morphemes are the smallest indivisible two-facet language units. They are not independent sense units as words or sentences are. They are always used as parts of words. Like a word a morpheme is a two-facet language unit, unlike a word a morpheme is not an autonomous unit and can occur in speech only as a constituent part of the word. It is the minimum meaningful language unit.

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A morpheme that can be a word by itself is called a free morpheme whereas a morpheme that must be attached to another element is said to be a bound morpheme. The morpheme boy, for example, is free, since it can be used as a word on its own; plural –s, on the other hand, is bound/ Thus, structurally morphemes fall into free morphemes and bound morphemes. A free morpheme coincides with the stem or a word-form. A bound morpheme occurs only as a constituent part of a word (bound morphemes often signify borrowings). Affixes are bound morphemes, for they always make part of a word.

Morphemes do not always have an invariant form. Morphemes in various texts can have different phonemic shapes. All the representatives of the given morpheme are called allomorphs (from Greek allos «other») of that morpheme. The morpheme used to express indefiniteness in English, for instance, has two forms – a before a word that begins with a consonant and an before a word that begins with a vowel (an orange, an accent, a car). The variant forms of a morpheme are its allomorphs.

Another example of allomorphic variation is found in the pronunciation of the plural morpheme –s in the following words: cats, dogs, judges. Whereas the plural is /s/ in the first case, it is /z/ in the second, and /iz/ in the third. Selection of the proper allomorph is dependent on phonological facts.

Allomorph is a positional variant of that or this morpheme occurring in a specific environment.