Number of morphemes in "saw" (As in, I saw the cat) [closed]

Does the word "saw" contain more than one morpheme? If so, how is this possible in such a short word? Are there any other words of this length that have multiple morphemes? I have just started studying linguistics and morphology, so I am probably just missing something, but I don't understand how it could be more than one.

One analysis is 2: see + the -ed past tense inflection, realized as 'saw.' I think Steven Pinker's book Words and Rules argues that this is a single morpheme. But if you are having trouble in general counting morphemes, be sure you get clear on the 8 inflections we have in English and can recognize derivational morphemes. About short words with multiple morphemes, start wtih those with more 'regular' forms, like ants (noun ant + -s plural infl) or hoed (hoe + -ed past tense infl). Those are pretty short! Then note that sometimes the form of the resulting combination isn't regular: cut + -ed past tense infl --> cut; do + -ed past tense inf --> did); ox + -s plural inf --> oxen; have + -s 3rd-person-singular present tense marker --> has. Hope that helps.

@Ash It's clear that the so-called 'irregular' forms such as "saw" or "ate" have one morpheme which -- unlike in the case of 'regular' verbs realizes both the verb and the abstract past tense. In a similar way, "seen" is a realization of the verb "see" and not the "-ed" morpheme but the abstract participle. A morpheme -- like "saw", "seen", "ate" -- which covers more than one grammatical feature (in our case, a verb and past tense or participle) is called a 'portmanteau morpheme'. A single morheme which packs up >1 feature. You can also approach forms like "saw" or "ate" as... idioms. Yes, idioms. We define an idiom as a form which receives a non-compositional realization. It's clear in semantics that a phrase "kick the bucket" is not analyzed compositionally as "kick" + "the" + "bucket" but jointly as "die". This is exactly how we can describe English 'irregular' verbs -- "saw" consists of a specific verb "see" and a separate past tense feature, but they are realized non-compositionally as one morpheme "saw". So, the broad conclusion is that we can have idioms at the boarder of phrases and semantics as well as at the boarder of morpphemes and their realization as sounds.