A Grammar of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT)

“Utterances are divided into constituents, marked mainly by the action of the hands, and are modulated by intonation-like articulations, expressed mainly by the face”. Prosody concerns these intonation-like articulations, and has to do with suprasegmental (or superarticulatory) characteristics of the sign stream. The main components of prosody are intonation, stress and rhythm.

Examples of non-manual prosodic features in sign languages are raised eyebrows, spreading of mouthings, and the use of body leans. There are also manual features that may fulfill prosodic functions (although most of these features can probably not be characterized as suprasegmental), such as extending the movement of a sign, adding a hold at the end of a sign, changing the signing speed, etc. Both these non-manual and manual elements can mark prosodic domains, can indicate grammatical functions such as the type of clause (e.g. interrogative, declarative), but also the emotional state of the signer, emphasis, or irony. Very broadly, prosody thus concerns the way the content is expressed.

This chapter addresses prosody at various levels. PHONOLOGY 2.1 starts with prosodic characteristics of parts of signs. PHONOLOGY 2.2 continues with prosodic elements that cover the full sign, but that also may extend beyond individual signs. PHONOLOGY 2.3 looks into one of the main components of prosody, namely, intonation. In PHONOLOGY 2.4, I describe prosodic aspects of interaction. Note, however, that the extensive description of specific grammatical uses of certain markers belongs in their allocated sections (e.g. the exact distribution of eyebrow raise in conditional clauses is addressed in SYNTAX 3.5.1).