"Accent" & Nortel

[Professor Des Power]

Tane is right. Auslan has made quite a few borrowings from ASL - mostly I
think (but this may be an artefact of being in an academic setting?) in
areas to do with academic matters: SUBJECT, SEMESTER, CURRICULUM come to
mind too. Interested in your comment about assimilation to Auslan phonology.
My ASL is near to non-existent, but (so?) I have always felt that they were
pretty much "copies" of the ASL ones. Ill ask a colleague who is fluent on
both ASL and Auslan and let everyone know. Maybe we are getting closer to
the notion of accent here?

Des

Tane Akamatsu wrote:

> Apropos of Bencie's comment:
>
> > A 'V' handshape sign for VOICE has been reported to me by individuals
> > from two universities with Deaf Studies departments in the UK - this
> > may reflect my earlier comment that borrowing from ASL to BSL seems
> > to occur predominantly in semantic field associated with linguistics.
>
> More anecdotal evidence for accent:
>
> When I was in Australia at a conference for deaf educators for a week a
> few years ago, and had plenty of time to watch/hear English/Auslan.  I
> noticed that Auslan had borrowed several signs from ASL (primarily
> initialized signs such as TC (total communication), PROGRAM (or maybe I
> should say PROGRAMME?), CLASS and several others that I can't remember
> right now), and changed the phonology to match Auslan phonology.  I make
> this claim because the signs, though recognizable as ASL signs, looked
> "funny" to me.  Either the handshapes had changed, in the case of CLASS
> -- from the double American C-hand to the double Australian C-hand -- or
> the movement was different, in the case of PROGRAM, but I can't remember
> how, exactly.    I'm going back to Australia this summer/winter for the
> International Congress on Education of the Deaf, so maybe I'll keep a
> closer watch on the Auslan signing.
>
> Maybe as others of you also attend the sign linguistics conference in
> Europe, you can watch for accent there too?
>
> Tane Akamatsu

--
Professor Des Power, Director
Centre for Deafness Studies and Research, and
Language Australia, Centre for Deafness and Communication  Studies
Faculty of Education
Griffith University, QLD 4111
Australia

Tel:  (617) 3875 5654
Fax:  (617) 3875 5924
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