Della Goswell

Phonological variation and change in Australian and New Zealand Sign Languages: The location variable

ABSTRACT In this study, we consider variation in aclass of signs in Australian and New ZealandSignLanguagesthatincludesthesigns THINK , NAME ,and CLEVER .Intheircitationform,these signs are specified for a place of articulation at or near the signer’s forehead orabove, but are sometimes produced at lower locations. An analysis of 2667 tokenscollected from 205 deaf signers in five sites across Australia and of 2096 tokenscollected from 138 deaf signers from three regions in New Zealand indicates thatlocation variation in these signs reflects both linguistic and social factors, as alsoreported for American Sign Language (Lucas, Bayley, & Valli, 2001). Despitesimilarities, however, we find that some of the particular factors at work, and thekinds of influence they have, appear to differ in these three signed languages.Moreover, our results suggest that lexical frequency may also play a role. An earlier version of this article, reporting on a subset of the Australian Sign Language data, waspublished by Gallaudet University Press (Schembri, Johnston, & Goswell, 2006). The illustrations inthis article were produced by Shaun Fahey. This research was supported by Australian ResearchCouncil (Grant LP346973) under the Linkage Projects Scheme to the University of Newcastle andthe Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children, by a Marsden Grant from the Royal Society of NewZealand to the Deaf Studies Research Unit at Victoria University of Wellington, as well as by theEconomic and Social Research Council of Great Britain (Grant RES-620-28-6001), and theDeafness, Cognition, and Language Research Centre. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance andsupport of Ceil Lucas, Bob Bayley, and Barbara Horvath, and thank the four anonymous reviewersfor their feedback on this article. In Australia, Julia Allen, Kevin Cresdee, Patti Levitzke-Gray,Stephanie Linder, and Kim Pickering acted as our deaf community contact people. Robert Adam,Breda Carty, Donovan Cresdee, and Brent Phillips provided useful input, and Darlene Thorntonassisted with data coding. We are grateful to the staff at the Deaf Society of New South Wales, DeafEducation Network, Renwick Centre, the Thomas Pattison School, the Western Australian DeafSociety, the Deaf Can Do (South Australia), the Victorian Deaf Society, and the Deaf ServicesQueensland for assistance during data collection. In New Zealand, Sonia Pivac, Margaret Bailey,Linda Allen, Ripeka Morgan, Pam Witko, Annette Scott, Rachel McMillian, Darryl Alexander, JoyceFerguson, and Patty Still acted as deaf community contact people. George Major and Sarah Fraser-Clark assisted with data coding. We are especially grateful to the many deaf people across Australiaand New Zealand who participated in this study.

The design and application of rubrics to assess signed language interpreting performance

This article explores the development and application of rubrics to assess an experimental corpus of Auslan (Australian Sign Language)/English simultaneous interpreting performances in both language directions. Two rubrics were used, each comprising four main assessment criteria (accuracy, target text features, delivery features and processing skills). Three external assessors – two interpreter educators and one interpreting practitioner – independently rated the interpreting performances. Results reveal marked variability between the raters: inter-rater reliability between the two interpreter educators was higher than between each interpreter educator and the interpreting practitioner. Results also show that inter-rater reliability regarding Auslan-to-English simultaneous interpreting performance was higher than for English-to-Auslan simultaneous interpreting performance. This finding suggests greater challenges in evaluating interpreting performance from a spoken language into a signed language than vice versa. The raters’ testing and assessment experience, their scoring techniques and the rating process itself may account for the differences in their scores. Further, results suggest that assessment of interpreting performance inevitably involves some degree of uncertainty and subjective judgment.