On Studies of Sign Language Phonology and Its Theoretical Models

As a natural language in the visual-manual modality, sign language has attracted linguists' attention since the 1960s.This paper aims to describe the theoretical achievements in the field of sign language phonology, including phonemes, features, constraints and prosodic hierarchy.Sign linguistics is mainly established on the discovery of the phonological unit in sign languages—phoneme.The study of sign language phonology has developed significantly in light of non-linear phonological theories and has become an indispensable subject in theoretical linguistic studies.This paper compares the three important phonological models of sign language: the HT Model, the Dependency Model and the Prosodic Model, and systematically demonstrates the methods and contents of sign language phonology studies.