For more than 50 years, language scientists have assumed that sentence structure is fundamentally hierarchical, made up of small parts in turn made of smaller parts, like Russian nesting dolls.

Phonetic theory has generally been based on the assumption that speech can be divided into discrete segments, each phonetically homogeneous with respect to all linguistically significant parameters.

Green, Jerry R. "Sequential Structure of Futures Markets and the Value of Improving Information: An Example." Economics Letters 1, no. 1 (1978): 29–32 ...