[rvense]

While I think there's a generally accepted definition of morpheme (as the smallest distinctive unit), that doesn't give you a good definition of the word. (Because there isn't one.)

Funny you use the term morphology like that. To me it's basically synonymous with inflection, very traditional, where morpheme is very much a structuralist term. But all my teachers were cognitive-functional linguists, so everything was cut rather different and sometimes it's hard to talk.

[Mezzie]

Yeah, my morphology teacher was a structuralist, and this was quite a while ago, so I have no doubt I'm biased there. (I actually preferred the cognitive stuff I was introduced to; I really liked working with metaphor in their systems and syntax/phonology/morphology were less my thing than semantics and sociolinguistics.)

You're definitely right that the definitions aren't cut-and-dried and that makes typology rather difficult.