Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies the structure of words and how they are formed. This includes the identification and analysis of different types of morphemes, the smallest units of meaning in language, as well as how they combine to form words. Morphology also examines the rules and principles that govern word formation, such as affixation (adding prefixes or suffixes), compounding (combining words), and inflection (changing the form of a word to indicate grammatical information like tense or plurality). Overall, morphology plays a crucial role in understanding the internal structure of words and their relationship to one another within a language.