A Concise Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language

General Editor: Graeme Kennedy

Consultant Editors: David McKee and Rachel Locker McKee
Compilation Editors: Richard Arnold and Pat Dugdale
Graphics Artist: Shaun Fahey
Technical Editor: David Moskovitz

Many thousands of New Zealanders are familiar with New Zealand Sign Language. This essential guide to the language contains over 2,500 commonly used signs, along with valuable learning tools. The signs are in handshape order, with a full index of English words and phrases also taking the reader into the dictionary.

New Zealand Sign Language, like other natural languages, is a real language – a structured system of handshapes and movements located within a signing space. These form a system of meaningful symbols which are able to express ideas, just as words are combined into sentences in spoken languages.

New Zealand Sign Language was first described in the comprehensive A Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language (Auckland University Press/Bridget Williams Books, 1997); this major dictionary, containing more than 4,000 signs, is the basis for the A Concise Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language. Both dictionaries draw on the continuing research of the Deaf Studies Research Unit at Victoria University.

As Sir Roy McKenzie wrote of a A Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language: ‘Deaf people and their language have been invisible and unheard in New Zealand for too long.’ This new volume, A Concise Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language, is an invaluable resource for the Deaf; and for their families, friends and colleagues a ‘tremendous opportunity to build a bridge of communication’. Students of New Zealand Sign Language will find this an essential text.

Endorsements                                              

Shortlisted in Reference & Anthology section of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards 2003.

'This is the sort of model reference work to which others might aspire.' Montana New Zealand Book Awards 2003

'… an immaculately groomed thoroughbred - a triumph of printing craft and editorial skills … an outstanding feat of lexicographical research which will serve for years to come as a model for such descriptions of "visual" languages.' Reference Reviews

Contents                                                       

Index of handshapes of New Zealand Sign Language
Preface
Introduction

Guide to using the dictionary
Structure of entries
How to look up the meaning of a sign
How to find the sign or signs for a word or phrase

Linguistic aspects of New Zealand Sign Language

Keys and glossaries
Symbols used in graphics
Structures of sign descriptions
Glossary of terms used
Body location diagram

Abbreviations

A Concise Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language
in handshape order

Appendices
Manual Alphabet
Numbers
Telling the time
Age
Days of the week
Months
Pronouns
Classifier types

Index of words and phrases
in alphabetical order