The phonetics/phonology interface refers to the relationship between the physical dimensions of phonetics and the abstract arrangement of phonemes and their manifestations within the phonological systems of languages. This chapter provides an overview of a range of approaches to the investigation of the phonetics/phonology interface, with particular attention to the relationships between phonetic factors such as positional prominence, acoustic salience and articulatory gestures, and phonological phenomena such as segment features and inventories, assimilation, and tone. I survey several clusters of theoretical orientation, each with distinct theoretical underpinnings and claims about the extent to which phonological concepts encode, reflect or direct phonetic details. I conclude with a discussion synthesising these seemingly disparate approaches, unifying them around a theme of linking the continuous physical dimensions of phonetic science with the abstract cognitive categories and rules of combination that typify phonological models. I discuss pedagogical implications and new directions in which facets of the interface can be explored.

By working through phonological questions using sign language data we arrive at a new understanding of the very nature of phonology, of the very nature of language. This chapter gives a brief historical look into the field from its inception, lays out the reasons why thinking about sign language phonology opens up new ways to understand the nature of language, broadly construed, and provides enough background on the units of word-level phonology in sign languages to see practical and theoretical connections to parallel issues in spoken language phonology.