query: relationships between sign languages

[Adam Schembri, Deaf Studies]

See Emmorey & Lane (2000) 'Signs of Language revisited' for an
article by James Woodward on lexicostatistical relationships between
signed varieties in Vietnam and Thailand. It seems there has been
some influence from LSF on Vietnamese Sign Language. I think Woodward
has completed a number of similar studies on other signed languages.

(BTW: I am also wondering about areal influences in South East/East
Asia. The use of the Y handshape to represent a person has been
documented for HKSL, Thai SL and Taiwanese SL - does anyone know if
this is related to patterns of conventional gesture among hearing
people in that part of the world, just as the use of the V hand for
'legs' appears to be in Europe/North America/Australasia?)

I believe Australasian Signed English (itself based on Auslan) has
also been used in Papua New Guinea in addition to Fiji, but I am not
aware of any published research on signed languages in PNG. I would
be interested to know more about Indonesian SL, as I have seen
interpreting provided on television there, but it doesn't look
related to any sign language I know, although what I saw may have
been a form of Signed Bahasa Indonesia.

I think some varieties of South African Sign Language (SASL) are
closely related to the BANZSL (British-Australian-New Zealand)
signed language family, and other SASL varieties have been more
influenced by Irish Sign Language (ISL). ISL has also had some
influence on the Auslan lexicon.

Based on casual observation, there appear to be some influences from
LIS (Italian SL) on Albanian SL.

A presentation in Zambian SL at the recent WFD congress in Australia
appeared to be very ASL-influenced.

Adam



----------------------
Adam Schembri
Centre for Deaf Studies
University of Bristol
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Bristol BS8 1TN
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Email: Adam.Schembri at bristol.ac.uk
Website: www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/DeafStudies