PARALLELS AND DIVERGENCES BETWEEN WARLPIRI SIGN LANGUAGE AND SPOKEN WARLPIRI: ANALYSES OF SIGNED AND SPOKEN DISCOURSES

Abstract

Among the Warlpiri, as among other central Australian Aborigines, older women use a complex sign language as an alternative to speech when, for ritual reasons, as in mourning, silence must be observed. As part of a study of the relationship between this sign language and spoken Warlpiri, a comparison is undertaken between a signed version and a spoken version of two traditional narratives, each told by the same woman out recorded on separate occasions. It is found that signs are ordered in the same way within signed discourse as are words in spoken discourse and a comparison between discourse units in the two versions dealing with the same content shows a close correspondence between the words and signs used; complex lexical items, such as preverb‐verb formations in the spoken language are commonly matched by compound signs that correspond to the morphological structure of the spoken form. However, only lexical morphemes are represented in sign. Markers of case relations, tense, and cliticized pronouns are not signed. The findings are interpreted as supporting the view that these alternate sign languages, unlike sign language of the deaf, are not fully autonomous systems but are built up as gestural representations of the semantic units provided by the spoken language.