Kearsy Cormier
University College London
Network
Latest external collaboration on country level. Dive into details by clicking on the dots.
Publication
Featured researches published by Kearsy Cormier.
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. (2002) | 2002
Richard P. Meier; Kearsy Cormier; David Quinto-Pozos
The realization that signed languages are true languages is one of the great discoveries of the last 30 years of linguistic research. The work of many sign language researchers has revealed deep similarities between signed and spoken languages in their structure, acquisition, and processing, as well as differences, arising from the differing articulatory and perceptual constraints under which signed languages are used and learned. This book provides a crosslinguistic examination of the properties of many signed languages, including detailed case studies of Hong Kong, British, Mexican, and German sign languages. The contributions to this volume, by some of the most prominent researchers in the field, focus on a single question: to what extent is linguistic structure influenced by the modality of language? Their answers offer particular insights into the factors that shape the nature of language and contribute to our understanding of why languages are organized as they are.
Behavior Research Methods | 2008
David P. Vinson; Kearsy Cormier; Tanya Denmark; Adam Schembri; Gabriella Vigliocco
Research on signed languages offers the opportunity to address many important questions about language that it may not be possible to address via studies of spoken languages alone. Many such studies, however, are inherently limited, because there exist hardly any norms for lexical variables that have appeared to play important roles in spoken language processing. Here, we present a set of norms for age of acquisition, familiarity, and iconicity for 300 British Sign Language (BSL) signs, as rated by deaf signers, in the hope that they may prove useful to other researchers studying BSL and other signed languages. These norms may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.
Cognition | 2012
Kearsy Cormier; Adam Schembri; David P. Vinson; Eleni Orfanidou
Highlights ► Deaf native signers, early and late learners judged BSL sentence grammaticality. ► Early learners performed worse the later they were exposed to BSL. ► Late learners’ performance was not affected by age of learning BSL. ► Unique effect of age of learning BSL found in early learners. ► Prelingually deaf late learners may benefit from first language competence in English.
PLOS ONE | 2014
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.
Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education | 2013
Kearsy Cormier; Sandra Smith; Zed Sevcikova
British Sign Language (BSL) signers use a variety of structures, such as constructed action (CA), depicting constructions (DCs), or lexical verbs, to represent action and other verbal meanings. This study examines the use of these verbal predicate structures and their gestural counterparts, both separately and simultaneously, in narratives by deaf children with various levels of exposure to BSL (ages 5;1 to 7;5) and deaf adult native BSL signers. Results reveal that all groups used the same types of predicative structures, including children with minimal BSL exposure. However, adults used CA, DCs, and/or lexical signs simultaneously more frequently than children. These results suggest that simultaneous use of CA with lexical and depicting predicates is more complex than the use of these predicate structures alone and thus may take deaf children more time to master.
Sign Language Studies | 2014
Sandra Smith; Kearsy Cormier
In this study we investigate the use of spatial scale and enactment (via constructed action, or CA) in British Sign Language (BSL) narratives of deaf native and nonnative signing children aged eight to ten. We find that the two types of prototypically aligned uses of spatial scale and enactment as described in the sign language literature (i.e. use of character scale with CA, and use of observer scale without CA) occur in both the native and nonnative signing children. We find that observer scale with CA is used by the non-native signing children but not the native signing children, and the opposite pattern with character scale without CA. These findings suggest that cognitive abilities such as perspective taking and the use of spatial scale should be considered along with linguistic abilities when looking at age of acquisition effects.
Open Linguistics | 2017
Matt Brown; Kearsy Cormier
Abstract British Sign Language (BSL) is a visual-gestural language distinct from spoken languages used in the United Kingdom but in contact with them. One product of this contact is the use of fingerspelling to represent English words via their orthography. Fingerspelled loans can become “nativised”, adapting manual production to conform more closely to the native lexicon’s inventory of phonemic constraints. Much of the previous literature on fingerspelling has focused on one-handed systems but, unlike the majority of sign languages, BSL uses a two-handed manual alphabet. What is the nature of nativisation in BSL, and does it exhibit sociolinguistic variation? We apply a cross-linguistic model of nativisation to BSL Corpus conversation and narrative data (http://bslcorpusproject.org) obtained from 150 signers in 6 UK regions. Mixed effects modelling is employed to determine the influence of social factors. Results show that the participants’ home region is the most significant factor, with London and Birmingham signers significantly favouring use of fully nativised fingerspelled forms. Non-nativised sequences are significantly favoured in signers of increasing age in Glasgow and Belfast. Gender and parental language background are not found to be significant factors in nativisation. The findings also suggest a form of reduction specific to London and Birmingham.
In: Hannahs, SJ and Bosch, A, (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Phonological Theory. Routledge (2017) | 2017
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
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
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.