Pointing to the body: Kin signs in Australian Indigenous sign languages

J Green; A Bauer; A Gaby; EM Ellis

Journal article

Pointing to the body: Kin signs in Australian Indigenous sign languages

J Green, A Bauer, A Gaby, EM Ellis

Gesture | JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING CO | Published : 2018

DOI: 10.1075/gest.00009.gre

Abstract

Kinship plays a central role in organizing interaction and other social behaviors in Indigenous Australia. The spoken lexicon of kinship has been the target of extensive consideration by anthropologists and linguists alike. Less well explored, however, are the kin categories expressed through sign languages (notwithstanding the pioneering work of Adam Kendon). This paper examines the relational categories codified by the kin signs of four language-speaking groups from different parts of the Australian continent: the Anmatyerr from Central Australia; the Yolŋu from North East Arnhem Land; the Kuuk Thaayorre from Cape York and the Ngaatjatjarra/ Ngaanyatjarra from the Western Desert. The purpo..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Jennifer Green Author

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Grants

Awarded by Appalachian Regional Commission

Funding Acknowledgements

We thank the many signers from the communities of Mapuru, Galiwin'ku, Darwin, Pormpuraaw, Ti Tree, Willowra and Tjukurla who have participated in this research on kin signs. In particular, thanks go to Janie Long Pwerrerl, Eileen Campbell Pwerrerl, April Campbell Pengart, Norma Giles, Nancy Jackson, Myrtle Foote, Gilbert Jack and Elaine L. Maypilama. This research has been supported by ARC Postdoctoral Fellowships (DP110102767 and DE160100873) and by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as a part of EuroBABEL project ("Endangered Sign Languages in Village Communities") in 2009-2012. Research by Elizabeth Marrkilyi Ellis has been supported by ELDP (Endangered Languages Documentation Programme) (SG0187) and an ARC Discovery Indigenous Award (IN150100018). Additional support has come from the Research Unit for Indigenous Language at the University of Melbourne (RUIL), and from the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL). We thank Jennifer Taylor for providing the illustrations of signs that appear in this paper, Connie de Vos for encouraging us to pursue this comparative analysis of kin signs, Inge Kral for comments on an earlier version of this paper, and Patrick McConvell and an anonymous reviewer for comments on the final version. Lauren Reed also assisted in the annotation of the Ngaanyatjarra sign corpus. A version of this paper was presented at the Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research Conference (TISLR) in Melbourne in January 2016, and at the Australian Languages Workshop in Canberra, March 2016.