Inlinguistics, asegment is "any discrete unit that can be identified, either physically or auditorily, in the stream ofspeech".[1] The term is most used inphonetics andphonology to refer to the smallest elements in alanguage, and this usage can be synonymous with the termphone.
Inspoken languages, segments will typically be grouped intoconsonants andvowels, but the term can be applied to any minimal unit of a linear sequence meaningful to the given field of analysis, such as amora or asyllable inprosodic phonology, amorpheme inmorphology, or achereme insign language analysis.[2]
Segments are called "discrete" because they are, at least at some analytical level, separate and individual, and temporally ordered. Segments are generally not completely discrete in speech production or perception, however. The articulatory, visual and acoustic cues that encode them often overlap. Examples of overlap for spoken languages can be found in discussions ofphonological assimilation,coarticulation, and other areas in the study of phonetics and phonology, especiallyautosegmental phonology.
Other articulatory, visual or acoustic cues, such as prosody (tone,stress), andsecondary articulations such asnasalization, may overlap multiple segments and cannot be discretely ordered with them. These elements are known assuprasegmentals.
Inphonetics, the smallest perceptible segment is aphone. Inphonology, there is a subfield of segmental phonology that deals with the analysis of speech intophonemes (orsegmental phonemes), which correspond fairly well to phonetic segments of the analysed speech.
The segmental phonemes ofsign language (formally called "cheremes") are visual movements of hands, face, eye blinks, and body. They occur in a distinct spatial and temporal order. TheSignWriting script represents the spatial order of the segments with a spatial cluster ofgraphemes. Other notations for sign language use a temporal order that implies a spatial order.
When analyzing the inventory of segmental units in any givenlanguage, some segments will be found to bemarginal, in the sense that they are only found inonomatopoeic words,interjections,loan words, or a very limited number of ordinary words, but not throughout the language. Marginal segments, especially in loan words, are often the source of new segments in the general inventory of a language.[example needed]
Some contrastive elements of speech cannot be easily analyzed as distinct segments but rather belong to a syllable or word. These elements are called suprasegmental, and includeintonation andstress. In some languagesnasality andvowel harmony are considered suprasegmental orprosodic by some phonologists.[3][4]
