ORCID Profile
0000-0003-2440-8249
Current Organisations
University of Sydney
,
University of New South Wales
,
Macquarie University
,
Monash University
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Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-1992
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 22-02-2016
Abstract: This study investigates the conventionalization of mouth actions in Australian Sign Language. Signed languages were once thought of as simply manual languages because the hands produce the signs which in idually and in groups are the symbolic units most easily equated with the words, phrases and clauses of spoken languages. However, it has long been acknowledged that non-manual activity, such as movements of the body, head and the face play a very important role. In this context, mouth actions that occur while communicating in signed languages have posed a number of questions for linguists: are the silent mouthings of spoken language words simply borrowings from the respective majority community spoken language(s)? Are those mouth actions that are not silent mouthings of spoken words conventionalized linguistic units proper to each signed language, culturally linked semi-conventional gestural units shared by signers with members of the majority speaking community, or even gestures and expressions common to all humans? We use a corpus-based approach to gather evidence of the extent of the use of mouth actions in naturalistic Australian Sign Language–making comparisons with other signed languages where data is available–and the form/meaning pairings that these mouth actions instantiate.
Publisher: CAIRN
Date: 2010
DOI: 10.3917/LS.131.0019
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date: 18-01-2007
Abstract: This is first comprehensive introduction to the linguistics of Auslan, the sign language of Australia. Assuming no prior background in language study, it explores each key aspect of the structure of Auslan, providing an accessible overview of its grammar (how sentences are structured), phonology (the building blocks of signs), morphology (the structure of signs), lexicon (vocabulary), semantics (how meaning is created), and discourse (how Auslan is used in context). The authors also discuss a range of myths and misunderstandings about sign languages, provide an insight into the history and development of Auslan, and show how Auslan is related to other sign languages, such as those used in Britain, the USA and New Zealand. Complete with clear illustrations of the signs in use and useful further reading lists, this is an ideal resource for anyone interested in Auslan, as well as those seeking a clear, general introduction to sign language linguistics.
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 21-02-2018
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 04-2014
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 04-2014
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 1992
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Date: 28-08-2018
Abstract: Signed languages have been classified typologically as being manual dominant or non-manual dominant for negation. In the former negation is conveyed primarily by manual lexical signs whereas in the latter negation is primarily conveyed by nonmanual signs. In support of this typology, the site and spread of headshaking in negated clauses was also described as linguistically constrained. Headshaking was thus said to be a formal part of negation in signed languages so it was linguistic, not gestural. This paper aims to establish the role of headshaking in negation in Auslan with reference to this typology. In this corpus-based study, I show that Auslan users almost always negate clauses using a manual negative sign. Although headshakes are found in just over half of these manually negated clauses, the position and spreading behaviour of headshakes do not appear to be linguistically constrained. I also show that signers use headshakes as the sole negating element in a clause extremely rarely. I conclude that headshaking in Auslan appears similar to headshaking in the ambient face-to-face spoken language, English. I explore the implications of these findings for the proposed typology of negation in signed languages in terms of the type of data that were used to support it, and assumptions about the relationship between gesture and signed languages that underlie it.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 31-12-1999
Abstract: In this paper we attempt to define the notion of ‘lexeme’ in relation to signed languages. We begin by defining signs as a distinct kind of visual-gestural communicative act, different from other communicative uses of gesture. This is followed by a discussion of the most important categories of productive forms in signed languages, referred to simply as signs. The close relationship between the formational aspects of these signs and their meaning is also discussed and exemplified. We then describe the criteria for recognizing lexemes as a subset of signs, and distinguishing variant and modified forms. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications the notion of lexeme has for our understanding of the lexicon of signed languages and for signed language lexicography.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 06-2004
Publisher: Equinox Publishing
Date: 19-02-2013
DOI: 10.1558/CAM.V9I1.37
Abstract: Until recently no linguistic research had been carried out on Australian Sign Language (Auslan) with regard to its use in healthcare settings, although anecdotal information suggests that the health lexicon of Auslan is strikingly under-developed. This paper describes a study that examined health terminology from the perspective of deaf people. Based on a thematic analysis of focus group data, the paper outlines strategies that deaf Australians report using when communicating about health concepts that do not have established signs in Auslan. Participants described a variety of communicative strategies – including the use of fingerspelling, depiction and explanations – that they employ in order to circumnavigate lexical gaps when talking about health. The study provides a crucial starting point for a discussion of the implications of lexical gaps in Auslan and highlights issues of particular relevance for interpreters who take responsibility for brokering health terms and mediating health communication.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date: 2010
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 07-2009
DOI: 10.1017/S0954394509990081
Abstract: In this study, we consider variation in a class of signs in Australian and New Zealand Sign Languages that includes the signs think, name , and clever . In their citation form, these signs are specified for a place of articulation at or near the signer's forehead or above, but are sometimes produced at lower locations. An analysis of 2667 tokens collected from 205 deaf signers in five sites across Australia and of 2096 tokens collected from 138 deaf signers from three regions in New Zealand indicates that location variation in these signs reflects both linguistic and social factors, as also reported for American Sign Language (Lucas, Bayley, & Valli, 2001). Despite similarities, however, we find that some of the particular factors at work, and the kinds of influence they have, appear to differ in these three signed languages. Moreover, our results suggest that lexical frequency may also play a role.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 30-10-2009
Abstract: One of the most salient and interesting aspects of the grammar of signed languages is their use of space to track referents through discourse. One way in which this has been observed is the spatial modification of lexical verbs to show semantic roles associated with the verb’s arguments. In this paper, a corpus of 50 narratives signed by native and near-native signers was annotated, coded, and analyzed to observe how often these verbs were modified spatially. The data indicate that the spatial modification of verbs in Auslan is far from obligatory, even for the marking of object/undergoer arguments. This may be evidence to support the hypothesis that spatial markings of this type are still in the process of grammaticalization.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 31-12-2001
Abstract: The form and content of the lexical database of Auslan (Australian Sign Language) is described and explained. The type of database utilized and its precise structure (relational or flat, the type and number of fields, the design of the data entry interface, etc.) is first described. This is followed by a detailed description of the types of information registered in the database: phonological, definitional, bilingual (English-based glossing), grammatical, and semantic. The non-gloss based representations of each sign record (graphic, video, and transcription) that are used in the lexical database are then discussed. Finally, the compatibility of the Auslan lexical database with other lexical databases is examined. The paper concludes with a discussion of the possibility of building an extensive “universal” database of signs that could centralize lexical information from scores of signed languages and facilitate cross-linguistic investigations of lexis and phonology.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 10-2011
DOI: 10.1017/S0954394511000123
Abstract: This article reports the findings of parallel studies of variable subject presence in two closely related sign language varieties, Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). The studies expand upon research in American Sign Language (ASL) (Wulf, Dudis, Bayley, & Lucas, 2002) that found subject pronouns with noninflecting verbs to be more frequently unexpressed than expressed. The ASL study reported that null subject use correlates with both social and linguistic factors, the strongest of which is referential congruence with an antecedent in a preceding clause. Findings from the Auslan and NZSL studies also indicated that chains of reference play a stronger role in subject presence than either morphological factors (e.g., verb type), or social factors of age, gender, ethnicity, and language background. Overall results are consistent with the view that this feature of syntactic variation may be better accounted for in terms of information structure than sociolinguistic effects.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 31-12-2019
DOI: 10.1075/SL.18035.JOH
Abstract: This study investigates clause constructions in Auslan. It looks at the alignment of constituent semantic role with constituent position and order in clauses, changes in the morphology of signs according to position and/or role, and the interpretation of omitted arguments. The aim is to determine if there are grammatical relations in Auslan. The most frequent constituent order parallels English, thus Auslan might be said to also instantiate a basic SVO word order. However, every possible constituent order pattern is also attested without there being other coding and behavioural properties associated with grammatical relations that could explain this flexibility. I conclude that constituent order in Auslan is the result of the interaction of pragmatic and semantic factors, visual representation, and language contact with English, rather than autochthonous grammatical relations. Auslan grammar draws on both so-called gestural and so-called linguistic resources at the clause level, not just at the word (sign) level.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 22-03-2010
Abstract: Annotations are an important resource in corpus-based linguistic research. In fact, the most important feature of a modern signed language corpus should be that it has been annotated rather than simply transcribed. Digital multi-media annotation software can now transform language recordings into machine-readable texts using gloss-based annotations without it first being necessary to transcribe these utterances, provided that sign tokens are identified and discriminated according to type. Further annotations can subsequently be appended to these units. However, unique identifiers of sign types (or ‘ID-glosses’) can only be used if a comprehensive reference lexical database of the language already exists. In order to create a basic multi-purpose reference signed language corpus, therefore, linguists should prioritize annotation using ID-glosses above transcription. The effort expended in creating a transcription that does not facilitate the unique identification of sign types will not result in a machine-readable corpus in any meaningful sense, contrary to expectations.
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Date: 04-2019
Abstract: The Auslan and Australian English archive and corpus is the first bilingual, multi-modal documentation of a deaf signed language (Auslan, the language of the Australian deaf community) and its ambient spoken language (Australian English). It aims to facilitate the direct comparison of face-to-face, multi-modal talk produced by deaf signers and hearing speakers from the same city. Here, we describe the documentation of the bilingual, multi-modal archive and outline its development pathway into a directly comparable corpus of a signed language and spoken language. We differentiate it from existing bilingual corpora and offer some research questions which the resulting corpus may be best placed to answer. The Auslan and Australian English corpus has the potential to redress several significant misunderstandings in the comparison of signed and spoken languages, especially those that follow from misapplications of the paradigm that multi-modal signed languages are used and structured in ways that are parallel to the uni-modal spoken or written conventions of spoken languages.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 20-02-2015
DOI: 10.1017/S0954394514000209
Abstract: Language variation is often symptomatic of ongoing historical change, including grammaticalization. Signed languages lack detailed historical records and a written literature, so tracking grammaticalization in these languages is problematic. Grammaticalization can, however, also be observed synchronically through the comparison of data on variant word forms and multiword constructions in particular contexts and in different dialects and registers. In this paper, we report an investigation of language change and variation in Auslan (Australian Sign Language). Signs glossed as finish were tagged for function (e.g., verb, noun, adverb, auxiliary, conjunction), variation in production (number of hands used, duration, mouthing), position relative to the main verb (pre- or postmodifying), and event types of the clauses in which they appear (states, activities, achievements, accomplishments). The data suggest ongoing grammaticalization may be part of the explanation of the variation—variants correlate with different uses in different linguistic contexts, rather than social and in idual factors.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 21-10-2014
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 31-12-2013
Abstract: Co-speech pointing actions have been under-analysed or ignored in language description and linguistic theory and this has led to an over-interpretation of their role and status in signed languages as signs belonging to particular grammatical classes, such as pronouns, determiners, and locatives. I argue that the pointing signs found in signed languages are not fundamentally different from the pointing actions found in the composite utterances of spoken languages in their face-to-face mode. I show how pointing signs and pointing actions are both symbolic indexical signs (signs that have partly conventional elements and partly contextual elements and are thus hybrids of conventional and non-conventional signs). I conclude that pointing signs are not a fundamentally different kind of phenomena when they occur in signed language composite utterances (so-called ‘linguistic’ pointing) compared to when they occur in spoken language composite utterances (so-called ‘gestural’ pointing).
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 12-08-2012
Abstract: Measures of lexical frequency presuppose the existence of corpora, but true machine-readable corpora of sign languages (SLs) are only now being created. Lexical frequency ratings for SLs are needed because there has been a heavy reliance on the interpretation of results of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic experiments in the SL research literature yet, these experiments have been conducted without the benefit of such measures. In addition, measures of lexical frequency can also guide SL teachers by identifying which signs would be prioritized in early language instruction. I begin by a discussion of lexicalization and sign types in order to explain what constitutes a lexical sign in SLs. I then present the annotation method and results. In the discussion, I raise the potential limitations of previous studies of lexical frequency in terms of the discrimination of lexical signs from other kinds of signs, consistent lemma glossing, part of speech tagging, and the systematic treatment of depicting signs. I conclude in cautioning that descriptions of SL grammars that do not accommodate typical mixtures and sequences of signs as shown in data are likely to be unreliable.
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 06-07-2005
Abstract: The ethics of the use of genetic screening and reproductive technologies to select against and for deafness is presented. It is argued that insofar as deafness is a disability it is ethical to act in such a way as to avoid the conception or birth of children with genetic or congenital deafness. The discovery and recognition of signing deaf communities as cultural and linguistic communities (minorities) does not alter this basic ethical position, although the consequences of widespread application of this technology appears destined to lead to the eventual disappearance of these communities. The argument that acting to avoid deafness is unethical because it will lead to the elimination of a linguistic or cultural group (genocide or ethnocide) or conversely that acting to ensure deafness is ethical, if not praiseworthy, can only be sustained if deafness is not regarded as a disability at all. I argue that the premise that deafness is not a disability of some sort is false and thus the claim that genetic selection against deafness is unethical is untenable.
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Date: 11-2014
Abstract: In this paper, I discuss the ways in which multimedia annotation software is being used to transform an archive of Auslan recordings into a true machine-readable language corpus. After the basic structure of the annotation files in the Auslan corpus is described and the exercise differentiated from transcription, the glossing and annotation conventions are explained. Following this, I exemplify the searching and pattern-matching at different levels of linguistic organisation that these annotations make possible. The paper shows how, in the creation of signed language corpora, it is important to be clear about the difference between transcription and annotation. Without an awareness of this distinction – and despite time consuming and expensive processing of the video recordings – we may not be able to discern the types of patterns in our corpora that we hope to. The conventions are designed to ensure that the annotations really do enable researchers to identify regularities at different levels of linguistic organisation in the corpus and, thus, to test, or build on, existing descriptions of the language.
No related grants have been discovered for Trevor Johnston.