The Eighth Conference on Laboratory Phonology (held in New Haven, CT) continued the series' tradition of bringing together experts from different subfields by inviting papers on the phonology of signed and spoken languages. A major goal of this topic was to begin to uncover the nature of the human phonological capacity that underlies both types of systems. Several papers on signed phonology and comparisons of signed and spoken phonologies are included in this volume. Other papers address the categorical and variable aspects of phonological systems (both spoken and signed), the acquisition of such systems, and their role in guiding speech production.