query: relationships between sign languages

[Des Power]

Helo Ulrike. Fijian SL lexicon has been somewhat influenced by Auslan (maybe
NZSL too?), but many signs are from Australasian Signed English (from the
Suva school). Not sure about  influences on its syntax.

Des
--
Emeritus Professor Des Power
Griffith University

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> 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
> ?? 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
> ?? 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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