A model of discourse segmentation is a theoretical framework for dividing (oral or written) discourse into functional units. Such units differ from those of grammar analyses in being pragmatic-based; additionally, from a methodological point of view, models of discourse segmentation are a complementary tool for explaining those phenomena which fall out of the grammar–semantics interface. For instance:

(1)

(Two students talking about the courses that a common friend failed)

A:

eso tiene mal arreglo ya

E:

hombre le han caído cuatro ¿sabes?

A:

en-en segundo de bachiller//bueno pues como a tu primo

E:

no

 

 

‘A:

that’s hard to fix now

E:

well he failed four you know?

A:

in-in the second year of high school//well same as your cousin

E:

no’

In this example (1), the use of ¿sabes? (‘you know?’) cannot be accounted for by syntax; however, its function is far from arbitrary. To yield the turn, speaker E can use ¿sabes? only at the end of what he says, not at the beginning. This is because what each speaker said constitutes a discourse unit that allows some procedural elements in some positions, while other discourse units do not. Similarly, bueno (‘well’), at first sight, seems to be placed in the middle of speaker A’s response; still, the scope of bueno is limited to the hedged information of the utterance (‘same as your cousin’), which means that bueno actually occupies the first position of a smaller discourse unit. A well-defined model of discourse segmentation, then, seeks to translate such scopes into operational units, along with meaningful positions.

As remarked by Salvador Pons Bordería ^[1], models of discourse segmentation have been specially developed by Romanists, probably due to the (continental) European tradition of Text Linguistics, which has paid special attention to hermeneutic, philological-like studies. Dealing with ‘the strand of research […] which pressed langue-raised scholars (especially syntacticians and phoneticians) to explore the at the moment terra incognita of the Saussurean parole’ ^[2] (p. 7), this entry presents the last and most actualized version of the discourse segmentation model developed by the Val.Es.Co. (Valencia Español Coloquial—‘Valencian Spoken Spanish’) Research Group.