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Dive into the research topics where Jordan Fenlon is active.

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Featured researches published by Jordan Fenlon.


PLOS ONE | 2014

Lexical variation and change in British Sign Language

Rose Stamp; Adam Schembri; Jordan Fenlon; R Rentelis; Bencie Woll; Kearsy Cormier

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.


Sign Language Studies | 2015

Sociolinguistic Variation and Change in British Sign Language Number Signs: Evidence of Leveling?

Rose Stamp; Adam Schembri; Jordan Fenlon; R Rentelis

This article presents findings from the first major study to investigate lexical variation and change in British Sign Language (BSL) number signs. As part of the BSL Corpus Project, number sign variants were elicited from 249 deaf signers from eight sites throughout the UK. Age, school location, and language background were found to be significant predictors for the use of regional number sign variants. The results suggest that leveling may be taking place in BSL number signs inasmuch as younger signers are using a decreasing variety of regionally distinct number sign variants. These results need to be understood in light of the sociolinguistic characteristics of the British deaf community, which differ from those of spoken language communities, with which linguists are more familiar.


In: Hannahs, SJ and Bosch, A, (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Phonological Theory. Routledge (2017) | 2017

The phonology of sign languages

Jordan Fenlon; Kearsy Cormier; Diane Brentari

Compared to spoken language phonology, the field of sign language phonology is a young one, having begun in the 1960s together with research into sign languages generally. Before this point, linguists often dismissed the academic study of sign languages as manual representations of spoken languages (e.g., Bloomfield, 1933) or as iconic wholes lacking any internal structure. However, since Stokoe’s (1960) seminal work, sign language linguists have demonstrated that, as with spoken languages, sign languages have sub-lexical structure that is systematically organised and constrained. In addition though, sign languages also stand in stark contrast to spoken languages because they are produced in the visual-gestural modality and therefore the articulators involved in phonological organisation are extremely different. Within this chapter, we provide an introduction to the field of sign language phonology and a selective overview of contributions to date. We also highlight key areas that have attracted much debate amongst sign language linguists such as the development of phonological models, the effect of modality on phonology, and the relationship between sign language and gesture. Towards the end of our chapter, we describe new contributions to the field which have the potential to further illuminate our understanding of sign language phonology in the future. Our description will be centred around two unrelated sign languages: American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL), though many of the patterns here have been described for other sign languages as well. This chapter’s concluding note emphasises that in order to understand phonology, one must consider sign languages.


In: McGregor, WB, (ed.) The expression of possession. (pp. 389-422). Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin. (2009) | 2009

Possession in the visual-gestural modality: How possession is expressed in British Sign Language

Jordan Fenlon; Kearsy Cormier

All known languages have some way of expressing possession, and signed languages are no exception. The primary question we pose in this chapter is: Is possession expressed differently in signed languages due to the use of the visual-gestural (rather than the aural-oral) modality, or are patterns relating to possession essentially the same for signed and spoken languages? Our chapter begins with background about British Sign Language (BSL), followed by an overview of the pronominal system of BSL. We then move on to look at attributive and predicative possession in BSL and finally an adjectival predicate of predisposition in BSL closely related to the possessive pronoun. Although this chapter is primarily an overview of possession in BSL, we will also include observations on other signed languages, such as American Sign Language (ASL), where applicable.


Archive | 2018

Variation and Change in Varieties of British Sign Language in England

Adam Schembri; Rose Stamp; Jordan Fenlon; Kearsy Cormier

British Sign Language (BSL) is the language used by the deaf community in the UK. In this chapter, we describe sociolinguistic variation and change in BSL varieties in England. We show how factors that drive sociolinguistic variation and change in both spoken and signed language communities are broadly similar. Social factors include, for example, a signer’s age group, region of origin, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status. Linguistic factors include assimilation and co-articulation effects. Some other factors, such as age of acquisition, however, appear unique to signing communities.


Sign Language & Linguistics | 2007

Seeing sentence boundaries

Jordan Fenlon; Tanya Denmark; Ruth Campbell; Bencie Woll


Language & Communication | 2013

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

Jordan Fenlon; Adam Schembri; R Rentelis; Kearsy Cormier


Language Documentation & Conservation | 2013

Building the British Sign Language Corpus

Adam Schembri; Jordan Fenlon; R Rentelis; Sally Reynolds; Kearsy Cormier


language resources and evaluation | 2012

From corpus to lexical database to online dictionary: Issues in annotation of the BSL Corpus and the development of BSL SignBank

Kearsy Cormier; Jordan Fenlon; Trevor Johnston; R Rentelis; Adam Schembri; Katherine Rowley; R Adam; Bencie Woll


Lingua | 2014

Using conversational data to determine lexical frequency in British Sign Language: The influence of text type

Jordan Fenlon; Adam Schembri; R Rentelis; David P. Vinson; Kearsy Cormier

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Kearsy Cormier

University College London

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R Rentelis

University College London

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Bencie Woll

University College London

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Sally Reynolds

University College London

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