Carl Börstell
Biographic Data
| ID | 2137556 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carl Börstell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carl |
| FAMILY NAME | Börstell |
| SIGNATURE | BÖRSTELL C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bergen |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7549-4648 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Approaching lexical variation in Swedish Sign Language
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Languages exhibit variation, which may reflect ethnic, geographic, social or age- or gender-based differences between language users. Many sign languages are known to exhibit lexical variation, with multiple sign forms being used for the same concept. Such lexical variation may derive from (historical) schools for the deaf, having resulted in school-based “dialects”. In…
Depicting handshapes for animate referents in Swedish Sign Language
In this article, we explore the distribution of handshapes used in depicting constructions (also known as classifier predicates ) representing animate referents in Swedish Sign Language (STS). Using data from the STS Corpus, the analysis is focused on factors influencing the choice of handshape with regard to the 1-handshape vs 2-handshape variants, exploring their usage in different functions and contexts. The results demonstrate patterns in how…
Non-signers favor two-handed gestures when expressing inherently plural meanings
Sign languages have been shown to favor two-handed forms to express plural meanings, and in this paper we investigate whether this pattern is similarly found in silent gestures improvised by hearing non-signers. We use 100 concepts with corresponding plurality ratings as stimuli for a silent gesture elicitation task, in which five hearing non-signers are asked to improvise manual gestures for each of the concepts, and the elicited gestures are th…
Better letter
While iconicity has sometimes been defined as meaning transparency, it is better defined as a subjective phenomenon bound to an individual’s perception and influenced by their previous language experience. In this article, I investigate the subjective nature of iconicity through an experiment in which 72 deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing (signing and non-signing) participants rate the iconicity of individual letters of the American Sign Language …
Finding continuers in Swedish Sign Language
In this paper, I use methods from corpus linguistics and computer vision to find candidates for continuers – that is, conversational markers that signal comprehension and encouragement to the primary speaker/signer to continue – in a corpus of Swedish Sign Language (STS). Using different methods based on distributional patterns in conversational turns, I identify a small set of manual signs – particularly the sign JA@ub ‘yes’ – that exhibit the c…
A cross-linguistic study of lexical and derived antonymy
Antonymy is the lexical relation of opposition. The nature of the oppositeness may differ - e.g., contradictory ('true'-'false') or gradable ('tall'-'short') - and there may be variation as to the relationship in their formal encoding, whether the antonyms are expressed as distinct lexical forms (e.g., true vs. false) or if one form is derived from the other (e.g., true vs. untrue). We investigate the relationship between the two members of 37 an…
Lexical comprehension within and across sign languages of Belgium, China and the Netherlands
There are hundreds of known sign languages around the world today, distinct languages each with its own historical and cultural context. Nevertheless, it is well known among signers who move through international spaces and across signing communities that a certain degree of mutual intelligibility is achievable during so-called cross-signing, even between historically unrelated sign languages. This has been explained by shared experiences, transl…
Spatial metaphors in antonym pairs across sign languages
We analyze sign locations in 776 signs from 16 antonym pairs across 27 sign languages to examine metaphorical mappings of emotional valence (positive vs. negative) along different spatial axes. We conduct both an automatic and a manual analysis of sign location and movement direction, to investigate cross-linguistic patterns of spatial valence contrasts. Contrary to our hypothesis, negative valence concepts are generally articulated higher up tha…
Transitivity prominence within and across modalities
We investigate transitivity prominence of verbs across signed and spoken languages, based on data from both valency dictionaries and corpora. Our methodology relies on the assumption that dictionary data and corpus-based measures of transitivity are comparable, and we find evidence in support of this through the direct comparison of these two types of data across several spoken languages. For the signed modality, we measure the transitivity promi…
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Transitivity prominence within and across modalities
We investigate transitivity prominence of verbs across signed and spoken languages, based on data from both valency dictionaries and corpora. Our methodology relies on the assumption that dictionary data and corpus-based measures of transitivity are comparable, and we find evidence in support of this through the direct comparison of these two types of data across several spoken languages. For the signed modality, we measure the transitivity promi…
Spatial metaphors in antonym pairs across sign languages
We analyze sign locations in 776 signs from 16 antonym pairs across 27 sign languages to examine metaphorical mappings of emotional valence (positive vs. negative) along different spatial axes. We conduct both an automatic and a manual analysis of sign location and movement direction, to investigate cross-linguistic patterns of spatial valence contrasts. Contrary to our hypothesis, negative valence concepts are generally articulated higher up tha…
Lexical comprehension within and across sign languages of Belgium, China and the Netherlands
There are hundreds of known sign languages around the world today, distinct languages each with its own historical and cultural context. Nevertheless, it is well known among signers who move through international spaces and across signing communities that a certain degree of mutual intelligibility is achievable during so-called cross-signing, even between historically unrelated sign languages. This has been explained by shared experiences, transl…
Better letter
While iconicity has sometimes been defined as meaning transparency, it is better defined as a subjective phenomenon bound to an individual’s perception and influenced by their previous language experience. In this article, I investigate the subjective nature of iconicity through an experiment in which 72 deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing (signing and non-signing) participants rate the iconicity of individual letters of the American Sign Language …
Finding continuers in Swedish Sign Language
In this paper, I use methods from corpus linguistics and computer vision to find candidates for continuers – that is, conversational markers that signal comprehension and encouragement to the primary speaker/signer to continue – in a corpus of Swedish Sign Language (STS). Using different methods based on distributional patterns in conversational turns, I identify a small set of manual signs – particularly the sign JA@ub ‘yes’ – that exhibit the c…
A cross-linguistic study of lexical and derived antonymy
Antonymy is the lexical relation of opposition. The nature of the oppositeness may differ - e.g., contradictory ('true'-'false') or gradable ('tall'-'short') - and there may be variation as to the relationship in their formal encoding, whether the antonyms are expressed as distinct lexical forms (e.g., true vs. false) or if one form is derived from the other (e.g., true vs. untrue). We investigate the relationship between the two members of 37 an…
Approaching lexical variation in Swedish Sign Language
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Languages exhibit variation, which may reflect ethnic, geographic, social or age- or gender-based differences between language users. Many sign languages are known to exhibit lexical variation, with multiple sign forms being used for the same concept. Such lexical variation may derive from (historical) schools for the deaf, having resulted in school-based “dialects”. In…
Depicting handshapes for animate referents in Swedish Sign Language
In this article, we explore the distribution of handshapes used in depicting constructions (also known as classifier predicates ) representing animate referents in Swedish Sign Language (STS). Using data from the STS Corpus, the analysis is focused on factors influencing the choice of handshape with regard to the 1-handshape vs 2-handshape variants, exploring their usage in different functions and contexts. The results demonstrate patterns in how…
Non-signers favor two-handed gestures when expressing inherently plural meanings
Sign languages have been shown to favor two-handed forms to express plural meanings, and in this paper we investigate whether this pattern is similarly found in silent gestures improvised by hearing non-signers. We use 100 concepts with corresponding plurality ratings as stimuli for a silent gesture elicitation task, in which five hearing non-signers are asked to improvise manual gestures for each of the concepts, and the elicited gestures are th…
Hearing Impairment and Communication (7 works) · Linguistics (7 works) · Sign language (7 works) · Mathematics (6 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Hand Gesture Recognition Systems (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Iconicity (3 works)