Span

Segment of speech or text representing a single linguistic unit.

text segment

In linguistics, a span is a segment of speech or text that represents a single linguistic unit. It can refer to a sequence of phonemes, morphemes, words, or other linguistic elements.

/spæn/

The term 'span' comes from the Old English word 'spann,' meaning to stretch or extend.

A span is like highlighting a few words in a sentence - it's just a section of text or speech that we want to focus on.

linguistics text

phoneme sequence morpheme sequence word sequence

text speech

linguistic unit