Variation in handshape and orientation in British Sign Language: The case of the '1' hand configuration

Jordan Fenlon; Adam Schembri; Ramas Rentelis; Kearsy Cormier

doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2012.09.001

Variation in handshape and orientation in British Sign Language: The case of the '1' hand configuration

Lang Commun. 2013 Jan;33(1):69-91. doi: 10.1016/j.langcom.2012.09.001.

Authors

Jordan Fenlon¹, Adam Schembri, Ramas Rentelis, Kearsy Cormier

Affiliation

¹ Deafness, Cognition & Language Research Centre, University College London, UK.

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.

Keywords: Phonology; Pointing; Sign language; Sociolinguistic variation.