AI Article Synopsis
- The paper examines how phonological variation in British Sign Language (BSL) affects signs made with a '1' handshape.
- Analysis of 2084 instances shows that variation is influenced by linguistic factors like phonological environment, grammatical category, and regional differences, while social factors mostly play a minor role.
- The study highlights that for signs where hand orientation is considered, only grammatical function matters, indicating specific implications for understanding pointing signs in signed languages.
Article Abstract
This paper investigates phonological variation in British Sign Language (BSL) signs produced with a '1' hand configuration in citation form. Multivariate analyses of 2084 tokens reveals that handshape variation in these signs is constrained by linguistic factors (e.g., the preceding and following phonological environment, grammatical category, indexicality, lexical frequency). The only significant social factor was region. For the subset of signs where orientation was also investigated, only grammatical function was important (the surrounding phonological environment and social factors were not significant). The implications for an understanding of pointing signs in signed languages are discussed.
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| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3688332 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2012.09.001 | DOI Listing |
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