Patterns of handshape errors in the Auslan productions of young children

The aim of this study was to describe the handshape substitution patterns observed in Australian Sign Language (Auslan). The spontaneous signed productions of 44 children aged 3; 0-6; 8 years were documented using a new approach across a 2-year period whilst the children were attending an Auslan/English bilingual-bicultural education program. The 3,166 signs within the corpus contained 3,849 individual handshape tokens; 374 of these handshapes were inaccurate. The majority of these errors involved handshape substitutions. The ASL 1 handshape was used most frequently to replace other handshapes. There were similarities and differences in handshape substitutions seen within this Auslan corpus to error patterns previously described for American Sign Language and British Sign Language. The differences in these Auslan data suggest that there is a need for sign language-specific data when considering how handshapes are acquired and used.