This is my first thread here. I joined the board because I love talking and learning about language, and you lot seem like-minded.
My question is on the topic of segments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segment_%28linguistics%29
I will point out the concept of consonant gradation. This example from Welsh:
(This feature seems to have been conditioned by a phonemic environment in Proto-Celtic which has been lost in the present day Celtic languages, so that today, this mutation is grammatically conditioned. For example, all words immediately following a "and" suffer one sort of mutation, as does any first word in a question) (the words come from a famous 19th century hymn called "calon lân")Dim ond calon lân all ganu
Canu'r dydd a chanu'r nos.
Another example from (some varieties of) Czech is that a masculine animate noun in the nominative plural (and any attributive adjectives) get their last consonant palatalised before the ending is attached. (drahý pták - an expensive bird. drazí ptáci - expensive birds)
It seems that a segment is to a phoneme what a phoneme is to a phone, in that a segment may have several phonemic (and orthographic) realisations, and a phoneme may have several phonetic realisations. In this way, the Welsh words "canu", "ganu" and "chanu" up there all begin with the same segment, and as for the Czech example, the "k" and "c" represent the same segment, as do "h" and "z".
My question is whether this is the mainstream interpretation of what a segment is.