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Handshapes and Radicals

Auslan signs can blend with other signs or modify their movement to create a new meaning. The root sign, or in some cases location or hand shape in a location can thus be likened to kanji in Japanese (base level written word) that can be blended or added to, too change the meaning.

A "radical" (coming from "radix" meaning root in Latin) in linguistics is a root word, suffix or prefix that hold meaning and can be added to a word, or forms the root of a word that allows us to interpret meaning. For example unicorn, unicycle, an unique all have a meaning associated with one (uni meaning one or single)

By understanding the most popular radicals in Auslan you will start to be able to guess meanings of unfamiliar signs.

Broadly radicals can be didived in to the following types:

• Sign Radical. For example the alphabet and numbers often form a radical like K in Kitchen and A in Aunt and actor. The 1 and 2 handshape are categorised for further study. Also signs like bad which morph into emergency and ill with added movement (and sometimes location shift)
• Handshape + location Radical. For example the bird handshape near the mouth, pointer hand near temple (think radical)
• Loan Sign Radical. This group derive meaning from a non-Auslan sign. For example the ASL P sign in Perth, and ASL D in dictionary. As a general rule these are older signs, however with the increased inter-country communication in visual languages we are seeing a new increase in sign evolution using Loan Sign Radicals.