About my doctoral
dissertation
[Back to Trevor
Johnston�s homepage]
You
can download (chapter by chapter) a slightly modified version of volume one of
my dissertation by clicking here.
The original dissertation used a modified Stokoe font which I created using
Fontographer. My modified Stokoe font was corrupted when the document was
opened and then saved in a later version of Word on a Mac computer which had a
new operating system that did not have the font installed. There was no back up
and the original digital version of the dissertation with the uncorrupted font
no longer existed from that date. I have since inserted an alternative notation
into the dissertation using a standard font and character set. I have also
added illustrations for most signs to make it possible to read the dissertation
without having volumes two and three at hand. The illustrations were not needed
in the original volume one of the dissertation since readers could refer to
volumes two and three which consisted of a fully illustrated Auslan dictionary.
Don�t ask me why some illustrations display as a negative image (a white line
on black background). This is a complete mystery to me. It is unintended and
signifies nothing about the sign. Apart from pagination and the correction of a
few typographical errors, the dissertation available for download is exactly
the same as the original.
My
doctoral dissertation, completed in 1989, was titled Auslan: the Sign
Language of the Australian Deaf Community. My supervisor was Barbara Horvath
of the Department
of Linguistics at the University of
Sydney.
The
purpose of my dissertation on Auslan was to show how its lexicon was unique,
how its grammar was independent of its majority community spoken and written
language, English, and how Auslan was comparable in complexity to other sign
languages that had been described by the mid-1980s. At that time, all these
points were contested by learned opinion in Australia, and especially by
professionals engaged in the education of deaf children.
Using
methods of participant observation, I collected an inventory of Auslan signs
from members of the Australian deaf community and presented this in a
dictionary, organized on principles internal to the structure of the language.
The dictionary constituted Volumes Two and Three of my dissertation. The
dictionary was published in 1989.
In
Volume One of the dissertation, I presented a sketch grammar of Auslan over
five chapters, concluding with a sixth chapter which discussed issues in sign
language lexis and grammar.
The
introductory chapter dealt with the need for sign language research in
Australia and described my research methodology. In particular, it described
how the signs and text examples were collected. These were referred to or cited
throughout the dissertation (including the dictionary). This chapter also
explained what class or type of signs were included in the dictionary (namely,
lexical signs) and which were not (namely so-called classifier signs, and what
I called at the time �sign-mimes� and �mimes�).
In
chapter two, I described the sociolinguistic structure of the deaf community in
Australia and dealt with the historical association between Auslan and British
Sign Language (BSL).
In
the following chapters, a descriptive account (sketch grammar) was given of
Auslan focusing on phonology (chapter three), morpho-syntax (chapter four) and
syntax (chapter five).
Throughout
the sketch grammar numerous comparisons were made between Auslan and a variety
of European and non-European sign languages, with particular reference being
given to BSL and American Sign Language (ASL).
In
the final (sixth) chapter of my dissertation, I noted that significant overall
resemblance between signed languages had already been reported in the
literature. I suggested that this phenomenon required some explanation and that
the lack of mutual intelligibility between individual sign languages was due
primarily to lexical diversity, rather than grammatical divergence.
I
argued that the remarkable similarity in the grammars of sign languages could
be explained by four major factors: modality, literacy, acquisition, and
language status. I argued that the sign languages which had thus far been
described shared similar characteristics along these dimensions and that this
contributed to a similarity of outcomes (�convergence�) in grammar, but not
lexicon. In particular, I showed that iconicity, a feature especially important
to languages in the visual-gestural modality, encouraged grammatical
�convergence� (in the biological and evolutionary sense) on the one hand and
lexical divergence on the other.
Considering
the structure of signing communities (as described in my dissertation) and
paying due attention to the relationship between signed and spoken languages
(and their written forms), I concluded that little, if any, genuine divergence
in sign language grammars appeared to exist. For these very reasons, I also
suggested that it was likely that only minor grammatical divergence would be
found in yet-to-be identified and described signed languages. Most, if not all,
divergence in grammatical patterning and coding that could be identified would
likely be able to be attributed to the influence or impact of various majority
spoken languages and/or their written forms on any given signed language.
Last updated: 27 May 2005
