How many morphemes does the word "bats" have?

The word "bats" consists of two morphemes. The first morpheme is "bat," which is the base or root word that refers to the flying mammal. The second morpheme is the suffix "-s," which indicates plurality. This suffix modifies the meaning of the root word by signifying that there is more than one "bat."

In linguistic terms, a morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language, and "bats" effectively combines the singular form with the plural suffix, making it a prime example of how morphemes function to change the meaning of a word in context.

Therefore, the two morphemes in "bats"—the root and the plural suffix—demonstrate how words can be built from smaller meaningful units to convey specific meanings.