Department of Linguistics
Professor Trevor Johnston
Selected publications
Publications since 2000
In preparation
Cresdee, D., & Johnston, T. (in preparation). Using corpus-based research to inform the teaching of Auslan as a second language: the example of verb aspect marking. In D. McKee, R. Rosen & R. McKee (Eds.), Signed languages as second language: International perspectives on teaching and learning.
Schembri, A., & Johnston, T. (in preparation). Usage-based grammars and sign languages: Evidence from Auslan. In S. Wilcox & T. Janzen (Eds.), Sign Language Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: New York & Berlin.
Johnston, T. (in preparation). Why are there so few idioms in signed languages? Based on paper presented at the 3rd UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference, University of Hertfordshire: 6-8 July 2010.
Johnston, T. (in preparation). Pronouns and symbolic indexicals in signed languages and spoken languages: a difference of degree or kind? Based on paper presented at the International Society for Gesture Studies, Frankfurt/Oder, 2010.
In press or under review
Johnston, T. (in press). Do signed languages have pronouns? A corpus-based study of Auslan (Australian Sign Language). Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. [Accepted March 2012]
Johnston, T., & Ferrara, L. (in press). Lexicalization in signed languages: when is an idiom not an idiom? Proceedings the 3rd UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference, University of Hertfordshire: 6-8 July 2010. http://www.uk-cla.org.uk/proceedings [accepted August 2011]
Schembri, A., & Johnston, T. (in press). Sociolinguistic variation and change in sign languages. In R. Cameron, C. Lucas & R. Bayley (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schembri, A., & Johnston, T. (in press). Sociolinguistic variation and change. In R. Pfau, M. Steinbach & B. Woll (Eds.), Sign Languages (Vol. Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Corpora
Johnston, T. 2008. Corpus of grammar and discourse strategies of deaf native users of Auslan (Australian Sign Language), Endangered Languages Archive, SOAS, University of London. http://elar.soas.ac.uk/
Johnston, T., & Schembri, A. 2006. Sociolinguistic Variation in Auslan corpus. Macquarie University. Limited access on application.
Refereed journal articles
Johnston, T. (2012). Lexical frequency in signed languages. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. 17(2), 163-193 doi: 10.1093/deafed/enr036
McKee, R., Schembri, A., McKee, D., & Johnston, T. (2011). Variable 'subject' Presence in Australian Sign Language and New Zealand Sign Language. Language Variation and Change, 23, 1-24
Johnston, T., & Schembri, A. 2010. Variation, lexicalization and grammaticalization in signed languages. Langage et Société, 131 mars 2010, 19-35.
Johnston, T. 2010. From archive to corpus: transcription and annotation in the creation of signed language corpora. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 15(1), 106-131
Johnston, T., & Napier, J. 2010. Medical Signbank: bringing deaf people and linguists together in the process of language development. Sign Language Studies, Winter 10(2), 258-275
de Beuzeville, L., Johnston, T., & Schembri, A. 2009. The Use of Space with Indicating Verbs in Auslan: A corpus based investigation. Sign Language & Linguistics, 12(1), 53-82
Schembri, A., McKee, D., McKee, R. L., Johnston, T., Goswell, D., &Pivac, S. 2009. Phonological variation and change in Australian and New Zealand Sign Languages: The location variable. Language Variation and Change, 21(2), 193-231.
Schembri, A., & Johnston, T. 2007. Sociolinguistic Variation in the Use of Fingerspelling in Australian Sign Language: A Pilot Study. Sign Language Studies, 7(3).
Johnston, T. 2006. Response to Comments on "W(h)ither the Deaf Community: Population, Genetics, and the Future of Australian Sign Language". Sign Language Studies, 6(2), 225-243.
Johnston, T. 2006. W(h)ither the Deaf Community? Population, Genetics, and the Future of Australian Sign Language. Sign Language Studies, 6(2), 137-173 (reprinted).
Johnston, T. 2005. In one's own image: ethics and the reproduction of deafness. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 10(4).
Johnston, T. 2004. The assessment and achievement of proficiency in a Native Sign Language within a sign bilingual program: The pilot Auslan receptive skills test. Deafness and Education International, 6(2), 57-81.
Johnston, T. 2004. Sign bilingual education programs and the need for language resources. Australian Journal of Education of the Deaf, 10, 26-34.
Johnston, T. 2003. W(h)ither the deaf community? Population, genetics, and the future of Auslan. American Annals of Deaf, 148(5), 358-375.
Johnston, T. 2003. Language standardization and signed language dictionaries. Sign Language Studies, 3(4), 431-468.
Johnston, T., Leigh, G., & Foreman, P. 2002. The implementation of the principles of sign bilingualism in a self-described sign bilingual program: Implications for the evaluation of language outcomes. Australian Journal of Education of the Deaf, 8, 38-46.
Johnston, T. 2002. The Representation of English using Auslan: Implications for deaf bilingualism and English literacy. Australian Journal of Education of the Deaf, 8, 23-37.
Schembri, A., Adam, R., Wigglesworth, G., Johnston, T., Barker, R., & Leigh, G. 2002. Issues in development of the Test Battery for Auslan Morphology and Syntax Project. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 7(1), 18-40.
Johnston, T. 2001. The lexical database of Auslan (Australian Sign Language). Sign Language & Linguistics, 4(1/2), 145-169. (Special edition: “Databases, transcription and tagging tools”).
Johnston, T. 2001. Nouns and verbs in Auslan (Australian Sign Language): an open and shut case? Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 6(4), 235-257.
Books
Johnston, T., & Schembri, A. 2007. Auslan (Australian Sign Language): An Introduction to Sign Language Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Johnston, T., & Schembri, A. (Eds.). 2003. The Survival Guide to Auslan: a beginner's pocket dictionary of Australian Sign Language. Sydney: North Rocks Press.
Chapters in books, refereed conference proceedings
Schembri, A., Cormier, K. A., Johnston, T., McKee, D., McKee, R. L., & Woll, B. 2010. British, Australian and New Zealand sign languages: Origins, transmission, variation and change. In D. Brentari (Ed.), Sign languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Johnston, T. 2009. Creating a corpus of Auslan within an Australian National Corpus. In K. Burridge, M. Haugh, J. Mulder & P. Peters (Eds.), HSCNet Workshop Proceedings: Designing the Australian National Corpus, UNSW, Sydney, 4-5 December 2008. Sydney: HSCNet.
Cassidy, S., & Johnston, T. (2009). Ingesting the Auslan Corpus into the DADA Annotation Store. In M. Stede& C.-R. Huang (Eds.), LAW III: 3rd Linguistic Annotation Workshop: Proceedings of the Workshop (pp. 154-157). Suntec, Singapore (6-7 August 2009): ACL &AFNLP, USA (ISSBN 978-1-932432-52-7).
Johnston, T. 2008. From archive to corpus: transcription and annotation in the creation of signed language corpora. In R. Roxas (Ed.), 22nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information, and Computation (pp. 16-29). Manila: De La Salle University.
Johnston, T., & Schembri, A. 2007. Testing language description through language documentation, archiving and corpus creation: the case of indicating verbs in the Auslan Archive Corpus. In P. K. Austin, O. Bond & D. Nathan (Eds.), Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory (pp. 145-154). London: SOAS.
Johnston, T., Vermeerbergen, M., Schembri, A., Leeson, L. 2007. “Real data are messy”: Considering cross-linguistic analysis of constituent ordering in Australian Sign Language (Auslan), Vlaamse Gebarentaal (VGT), and Irish Sign Language (ISL). In P. Perniss, R. Pfau& M. Steinbach (Eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Sign Languages: A Cross-linguistic Perspective, Mainz, Germany, March 25-27, 2004 (pp. 163-205). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
de Beuzeville, L., & Johnston, T. 2007. The role of visual representation in a signed language: evidence from native signing deaf children acquiring Auslan (Australian Sign Language). In S. Buescher& K. Holley (Eds.), Proceedings of the Sixth High Desert Linguistics Conference, November 4-6, 2004, University of New Mexico (Vol. 6, pp. 109-120). Albuquerque, NM: High Desert Linguistics Society.
Johnston, T., & Schembri, A. 2006. Issues in the creation of a digital archive of a signed language. In L. Barwick & N. Thieberger (Eds.), Sustainable data from digital fieldwork (pp. 7-16). Sydney: University of Sydney.
Schembri, A., Johnston, T., & Goswell, D. 2006. NAME dropping: Location variation in Australian Sign Language. In C. Lucas (Ed.), Multilingualism and sign languages: From the great plains to Australia:. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
Johnston, T. 2003. BSL, Auslan and NZSL: Three signed languages or one? In A. Baker & B. van den Bogaerde & O. Crasborn (Eds.), Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research. Hamburg: SignumVerlag.
Johnston, T. 2000. Sign Language Research: by whom and for whom? In Australian Association of the Deaf (Ed.), Unity and Diversity: XIII World Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf (Brisbane (Qld) Australia, July 25-31, 1999). (pp.123-138). Brisbane: Australian Association of the Deaf Inc.
Schembri, A., Wigglesworth, G., Johnston, T., Leigh, G., Adam, R., & Barker, R. 2000. The Test Battery for Australian Sign Language Morphology and Syntax Project: Noun-Verb Pairs in Auslan. In A. Schembri & J. Napier & R. Beattie & G. Leigh (Eds.), Deaf Studies, Sydney 1998: Selected papers from the Australasian Deaf Studies Research Symposium, Renwick College, August 22-23, 1998 (pp. 99-118). Sydney: North Rocks Press.
Internet websites
Johnston, T. 2009. Medical Signbank. www.auslan.org.au. Sydney: Macquarie University.
Johnston, T. 2005. Auslan Signbank. www.auslan.org.au. Sydney: Catalyst Communications & Training, Pty Ltd.
Entry in encyclopaedia
Johnston, T. & Schembri, A. (in press) Corpus Analysis of Sign Language. In Carol Chapelle (General Editor) Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
Johnston, T. 2006. Sign Language: Morphology. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd Ed. (pp. 324). Oxford: Elsevier.
Compact disks
Johnston, T., Thornton, D., & Napier, J. 2001. Discovering Auslan: A beginner's dictionary of Australian Sign Language. [CD-ROM]. Sydney: Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children.
Other journal articles
Leigh, G., & Johnston, T. (2004). First Language Learning in a Sign Bilingual Program: An Australian Study. NTID Research Bulletin, 9(2/3), 1-5.
Johnston, T. 2003. Auslan on the Internet. Disparity, 2(1), 21-24.
Publications before 2000
Refereed journal articles
Johnston, T., & A. Schembri. 1999. On Defining Lexeme in a Sign Language. Sign Language & Linguistics. 2, (1): 115-185.
Johnston, T. 1994. Comment on Turner. Sign Language Studies. 23, (83): 133-138.
Johnston, T. 1991. Transcription and glossing of sign language texts: Examples from Auslan (Australian Sign Language). International Journal of Sign Linguistics. 2, (1): 3-28.
Johnston, T. 1991. Spatial syntax and spatial semantics in the inflection of signs for the marking of person and location in Auslan. International Journal of Sign Linguistics. 2, (1): 29-62.
Johnston, T. 1990. Deaf Sign Language & the Cochlear Implant: opportunities and problems created by a better understanding of sign languages and advances in the technology of hearing aids. Australian Teacher of the Deaf. 30, 1-17.
Books
Johnston, T. 1998. Signs of Australia: a new dictionary of Auslan. Sydney: North Rocks Press. (603 pp.)
Johnston, T. 1989. Auslan Dictionary: A dictionary of the sign language of the Australian deaf community. Sydney: Deafness Resources Australia.
Monographs
Johnston, T. 1987. A general introduction to Australian Sign Language (Auslan). Adelaide: TAFE National Centre for Research and Development.
Johnston, T. 1987. A Curriculum Outline for Teaching Australian Sign Language (Auslan) as a Second Language. Adelaide: TAFE National Centre for Research and Development
Johnston, T. 1987. A preliminary signing dictionary of Australian Sign Language (Auslan). Adelaide: TAFE National Centre for Research and Development.
Chapters in books, refereed conference proceedings
Johnston, T. 1996. Function and medium in the forms of linguistic expression found in a sign language. In W. H. Edmondson & R. B. Wilbur (Eds.), International Review of Sign Linguistics (Vol. 1, pp. 57-94). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Johnston, T. 1993. The Realization of the Linguistic Metafunctions in a Sign Language. In Peng, C. C., & M. A. K. Halliday (Ed.), Language Sciences (Current Research in Functional Grammar, Discourse, and Computational Linguistics, with a Foundation in Systemic Theory), pp. 317-353.
Entry in encyclopaedia
Johnston, T. 1994. Australian Sign Languages. In Asher, R. E. (Ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, pp. 3922-3923. Oxford, New York: Pergamon Press.
Compact disks
Johnston, T. 1998. Signs of Australia on CD-ROM: a dictionary of Auslan. Sydney: North Rocks Press. A Multimedia Dictionary for MacOS (Version 1.0).
Johnston, T. 1997. Signs of Australia on CD-ROM: a dictionary of Auslan. Sydney: North Rocks Press. A Multimedia Dictionary for Windows (Version 1.0).
Other journal articles
Johnston, T., R. Adam, & A. Schembri. 1997. Research in progress: the Auslan lexicography project at Renwick College. Australian Journal of Education of the Deaf. 3, (1): 42-46.
Johnston, T. 1991. Autonomy and integrity in sign languages. Sign Post: newsletter of the International Sign Linguistics Association. 1, 2-5.
Review articles
Johnston, T. 1991. Review article of "Kendon, A. Sign Languages of Aboriginal Australia: Cultural, Semiotic and Communicative Perspectives". Australian Journal of Linguistics. 11, (1): 127-132.
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