Staff profile

Dr Adam Charles Schembri

Associate Professor

Faculty of Health Sciences

School of Allied Health
Department of National Institute for Deaf Studies and Sign Language

HS 2, Room 101, Melbourne (Bundoora)

 

Qualifications

BA Dip.Ed, M.Litt, Dip. Interpreting (Auslan/English), PhD (University of Sydney)

Teaching Units

  • DFS1ANA ‘Australian Sign Language 1A’
  • DFS2LSL 'Linguistics of Sign Languages'
  • DFS2LAG 'Language and Gesture'

Recent Publications

Books

Johnston, T. & Schembri, A. (2007). Australian Sign Language (Auslan): An introduction to sign language linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapters in books

Johnston, T. & Schembri, A. (in press) Corpus analysis of sign languages. In: C.A. Chapelle (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Wiley-Blackwell.

Schembri, A. & Johnston, T. (in press). Sociolinguistic variation and changes in sign languages. In: R. Bayley, R. Cameron & C. Lucas (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Schembri, A. & Johnston, T. (2012). Sociolinguistic aspects of variation and change. In: R. Pfau, M. Steinbach & B. Woll (Eds), Sign Language: An International Handbook (pp. 788-816). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Schembri, A., Cormier, K., Johnston, T., McKee, D., McKee, R., & Woll, B. (2010). Sociolinguistic variation in British, Australian and New Zealand sign languages. In: D. Brentari (Ed.), Sign languages (pp. 479-501). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schembri, A. (2010). Documenting sign languages. In: P. Austin (Ed.), Language Documentation and Description Volume 7: Lectures in Language Documentation and Description (pp. 105-143). London: School of African and Oriental Studies.

Johnston, T. & Schembri, A. (2007). Testing language description through language documentation, archiving and corpus creation: the case of indicating verbs in Auslan. In: P.K. Austin, O. Bond, & D. Nathan (Eds.), Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory (pp. 145-154). London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Johnston, T., Vermeerbergen, M., Schembri, A. & Leeson, L. (2007). ‘Real data are messy’: Considering the 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.), Visible variation: Comparative studies on sign language structure. (pp. 163-205). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

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 Press.

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.(pp. 121-156). Washington DC: Gallaudet University Press.

Schembri, A. (2003). Rethinking “classifiers” in signed languages. In: K. Emmorey (Ed.), Perspectives on classifier constructions in sign languages. (pp.3-34). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Papers in refereed journals

Fenlon, J., Schembri, A., Rentelis, R., & Cormier, K. (in press). Variation in handshape and orientation in British Sign Language: The case of the ‘1’ hand configuration. Language and Communication.

Cormier, K. Quinto-Pozos, D., Sevcikova, Z. & Schembri, A. (2012). Lexicalisation and de-lexicalisation processes in sign languages: Comparing depicting constructions and viewpoint gestures. Language and Communication 32(4): 329-348.

Cormier, K., Schembri, A., Vinson, D. & Orfanidou, E. (2012). First language acquisition differs from second language acquisition in prelingually deaf signers: Evidence from sensitivity to grammatical judgement in British Sign Language. Cognition 124(1): 50-65.

McKee, R., Schembri, A., McKee, D., & Johnston, T. (2011). Variable subject expression in Australian Sign Language and New Zealand Sign Language. Language Variation and Change 23(3), 375-398.

Lewin, D. & Schembri, A. (2011). Mouth gestures in British Sign Language (BSL): A case study of tongue protrusion in BSL narratives. Sign Language & Linguistics 14(1): 94-114.

Cormier, K., Schembri, A. & Woll, B. (2010). Diversity across sign languages and spoken languages–Implications for language universals (A response to Evans & Levinson). Lingua 120(12), 2664-2667.

De Beuzeville, L., Johnston, T. & Schembri, A. (2009). The use of space with indicating verbs in Australian Sign Language: A corpus-based investigation. Sign Language & Linguistics 12(1), 53-82.

Schembri, A., McKee, D., McKee, R., 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.

Cormier, K., Schembri, A. & Tyrone, M. (2008). One hand or two?: A crosslinguistic analysis of the non-native lexicon in signed languages. Sign Language & Linguistics 11(1), 3-44.

Vinson, D. P., Cormier, K., Denmark, T., Schembri, A. & Vigliocco, G. (2008). The British Sign Language norms for acquisition, familiarity and iconicity. Behavior Research Methods 40(4), 1079-1087.

Schembri, A. & Johnston, T. (2007). Sociolinguistic variation in the use of fingerspelling in Australian Sign Language: A pilot study. Sign Language Studies 7(3), 319-347.

Schembri, A., Jones, C., & Burnham, D. (2005). Comparing action gestures and classifier verbs of motion: Evidence from Australian Sign Language, Taiwan Sign Language, and non-signers’ gestures without speech. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 10(3), 272-290.

Schembri, A., Wigglesworth, G., Johnston, T., Leigh, R., Adam, R. & Barker, R. (2002). Issues in the development of the Test Battery for Australian Sign Language Morphology and Syntax. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 7(1),18-40.

Johnston, T. & Schembri, A. (1999). On defining lexeme in a sign language. Sign Language & Linguistics 2(2), 115-185.