bound roots

[Carolyn Chaney]

In my Language for Teachers class we were discussing various kinds of
morphemes, and we discovered that we had difficulty knowing if certain
words were free morphemes or a combo of an affix plus a bound root.  This
was particularly difficult when the word has a syllable that looks like am
affix, such as mothER or DEcide.  Cases where there are several like words
(receive, deceive, conceive) look like bound roots.  Mother seems clearly
to be a free morpheme, as a mother is not one who moths.  But what about
decide?  inept?  nonchalant?  uncouth?  refine?  Uncouth, for example, is
given in texts as an affix plus bound root, but surely it doesn't mean
not-couth.  Does anyone have a clear explanation of how to distinguish
words with affix-looking parts from words that really have affixes + bound
roots, preferably an explanation that does not require looking up
derivations in the dictionary?

Thanks for the help!

Carolyn Chaney
Just call me stumped