A fundamental problem in the study of spontaneous speech is how to segment it for analysis. The segments should be relevant for the study of linguistic structures, speech planning, speech production, or communication strategies. Operational rules for segmentation should consider a wide variety of criteria and be hierarchically ordered. This is particularly important for analysis of a large corpus of data, in which comparison of multiple analyses is important. Analysis of several Black English texts from one geographic area suggests a framework for segmentation into either phonological phrases or macrosyntagms, the latter of which can also be divided into two or more sentence units. Further, sequences of one or more sentences dominated by an intonation superfix may be regarded as speech-act units that manifest special speech-act functions in the speech situation. This approach is based on the idea that the superficial cohesion of discourse, which reflects an underlying coherence, is structurally manifested in the interaction between prosodic units, macrosyntagms, and speech acts. (MSE)