Stamp, R;
Schembri, A;
Fenlon, J;
Rentelis, R;
Woll, B;
Cormier, K;
(2014)
Lexical variation and change in British Sign Language.
PLoS One
, 9
(4)
, Article e94053. 10.1371/journal.pone.0094053.
![[thumbnail of journal.pone.0094053.pdf]](https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png) Preview |
PDF
journal.pone.0094053.pdf Available under License : See the attached licence file. Download (4MB) |
Abstract
This paper presents results from a corpus-based study investigating lexical variation in BSL. An earlier study investigating variation in BSL numeral signs found that younger signers were using a decreasing variety of regionally distinct variants, suggesting that levelling may be taking place. Here, we report findings from a larger investigation looking at regional lexical variants for colours, countries, numbers and UK placenames elicited as part of the BSL Corpus Project. Age, school location and language background were significant predictors of lexical variation, with younger signers using a more levelled variety. This change appears to be happening faster in particular sub-groups of the deaf community (e.g., signers from hearing families). Also, we find that for the names of some UK cities, signers from outside the region use a different sign than those who live in the region.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Lexical variation and change in British Sign Language |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0094053 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0094053 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2014 Stamp et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Linguistics |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1428459 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
