In this chapter, the ways that sign language phonology and prosodic structure interface with the other components of the grammar will be described, including how the nondominant hand interacts with morpho-syntactic and prosodic constituency. The most novel of the interfaces that will be discussed in this chapter will be the gesture–language interface, but the phonetics–phonology, morphology–phonology, and syntax/semantics–phonology interfaces will be discussed as well. This chapter also describes the details of higher-order prosodic structure not defined in earlier chapters – the phonological word (P-word; also referred to as the prosodic word), phonological phrase (P-phrase), and intonational phrase (I-phrase) – and provides evidence for prosody as independent from the rest of the grammar. This is of paramount importance because, in addition to showing how various components are interconnected, mismatches among different autonomous components of the grammar are one way we know that those components exist.

In this chapter, issues concerning the emergence of phonology will be addressed by tracing the paths of phonology and morphophonology as they move from gesture, to homesign, and across multiple stages in cohorts (or generations) of young sign languages. The material covered in the first four chapters of this volume will provide theoretical context for the emergence of phonology. Relevant work on spoken languages, which has observed and modeled processes of emergence or mapped them typologically, will be discussed, and some of the principles of phonological systems will be articulated, such as paradigm uniformity, conventionalization, symmetry of the phonological inventory, and well-formedness constraints on phonological constituents. Based on ongoing work we can also address some of the social factors that may be important in different rates of emergence in different social contexts or “language ecologies.”