query: relationships between sign languages

[Ulrike Zeshan]

Dear colleagues,

I am trying to assemble information about relationships between sign
languages around the world. This is part of my typological project
comparing grammatical structures in sign languages around the world.
The relationships I am looking for are not necessarily  © enetic
ª° elationships in the usual sense of the word. In fact, I am not at all
sure that the usual method for establishing genetic relationships
between spoken languages (so-called  ©¬ istorical-comparative method k   is
applicable to sign languages at all. However, since the sign languages
we know are generally young languages with a documented history, it is
possible to point to links between them, which could be of various
types. For example, due to colonialization and emigration (British Sign
Language, Auslan, New Zealand Sign Language), due to the history of the
deaf education system (French and American sign languages), or due to
political domination (sign languages in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea).
I am not aware of any published sources summarizing such actual or
supposed relationships between sign languages (and would be most
interested if you know any such sources). However, there is much
 ©ß necdotal k  information around, I think, and I am interested in any
suggestions. Below I have assembled a list of sign languages that may
be related to each other in some way, and I would like to invite the
specialists in each sign language to comment on this list. Do you tend
to agree or disagree with this list? Can you add any further languages,
or would you change anything in the list? I have listed names of
countries rather than sign languages because there are often various
possible names for a sign language. The groupings that seem more
certain are on top of the list, with less certain ones near the bottom
of the list. Please feel free to comment, and thank you very much for
any contributions.

Ulrike Zeshan


List of supposed relationships between sign languages (listed by
country name):

Britain  o  Australia  o  New Zealand
France  o  USA  o  Russia
Japan  o  Taiwan  o  South Korea
USA  o  Uganda  o  Kenya  o  Thailand  o  Phillipines  o  Malaysia
Sweden  o  Norway  o  Finland
Denmark  o  Iceland
Italy  o  Argentina
mainland China  o  Hong Kong
Europe - Israel




=====
Dr. Ulrike Zeshan
Research Centre for Linguistic Typology
Institute for Advanced Study
La Trobe University VIC 3086, Australia
ph.: +61-3-94673084, fax: +61-3-94673053
e-mail: u.zeshan at latrobe.edu.au, ulrike_zeshan at yahoo.com

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