Australian Aboriginallanguages
Many Australian Aboriginal cultures relieve oneself or traditionally had a manually coded language, the signed counterpart of their oral language. This appears to be connected with various speech taboos betweenkin or at specific times, such(a) as during a mourning period for women or during initiation ceremonies for men, as was also the effect with CaucasianLanguage but not Plains Indian Sign Language, which did non involve speech taboo, or deaf sign languages, which are not encodings of oral language. There is some similarity between neighboring groups together with some contact pidgin similar to Plains Indian Sign Linguistic communication in the American Great Plains.
Sign languagesto be most developed in areas with the nearly extensive speech taboos: the central desert particularly among the Warlpiri in addition to Warumungu, and western Cape York. Complex gestural systems draw also been produced in the southern, central, and western desert regions, the Gulf of Carpentaria including north-east Arnhem Land and the Tiwi Islands, some Torres Strait Islands, and the southern regions of the Fitzmaurice and Kimberley areas. Evidence for sign languages elsewhere is slim, but they take been subject as far south as the south hover Jaralde Sign Linguistic communication and there are even some accounts from the first few years of the 20th century of the use of sign by people from the south west coast. However, many of the codes are now extinct, and very few accounts have recorded all detail.
Reports on the status of deaf members of such Aboriginal communities differ, with some writers lauding the inclusion of deaf people in mainstream cultural life, while others indicate that deaf people do not memorize the sign language and, like other deaf people isolated in hearing cultures, defining a simple system of home sign towith their immediate family. However, an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dialect of Auslan exists in Far North Queensland extending from Yarrabah to Cape York, which is heavily influenced by the indigenous sign languages and gestural systems of the region.
Sign languages were subject in north Queensland as early as 1908 Roth. Early research into indigenous sign was done by the American linguist La Mont West, and later, in more depth, by English linguist Adam Kendon.