A Grammar of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT)

Most examples given in Section 2.1.1 are by Ulrika Klomp. The constraints on the syllable are described following van der Kooij & Crasborn (2008), but the exceptions on the one location constraint and movement complexity constraint were identified by myself, with use of the online dictionary of the Dutch Sign Centre (Schermer et al. 2013; see Information on Data and Consultants at the end of Chapter 1 for more on the composition of the online dictionary). The selected finger constraint was found to apply to NGT by van der Kooij (2002); see Information on Data and Consultants at the end of the previous chapter for more information on this thesis. Van der Kooij & Crasborn (2008) did not describe their data or methodology explicitly, but mention the use of narratives (p. 1308) and the intuitions of two native signers (p. 1321).

Klomp discussed the relevance of the foot as a prosodic unit in NGT with several colleagues, and searched for multisyllabic signs that could illustrate this phenomenon. She reached the same conclusion as Crasborn & van der Kooij that some elements could be analyzed on the level of the foot, but that there is also little evidence available for this prosodic level. Most examples in PHONOLOGY  2.2 are also Klomp’s, and she furthermore analyzed videos of the Corpus NGT (see Introduction of the thesis) for the illustration of the phonological phrase, intonational phrase, phonological utterance and of back-channeling.  Note that the analyses on the different prosodic levels are preliminary, and that other analyses may apply as well.

The Corpus NGT was the main data source for the unpublished paper on cliticization of van Boven (2018), for the master’s thesis of van Loon (2012) on palm_up, and, to some extent, for the study conducted by Crasborn, van der Kooij & Ros (2012) on phrase-final prosodic words. The latter scholars additionally used elicited data, consisting of 21 sentences which were translated from Dutch to NGT by four signers. Crasborn et al. (2008) used another corpus for the investigation of mouth actions, namely the ECHO Corpus, in which five signers participated. The data consist of signed fable stories, interviews with the signers, poetry and a small lexicon.

The intonation patterns described in PHONOLOGY 2.3 have mainly been identified by others. See Information on Data and Consultants at the end of Syntax, Chapter 3, for information on the methodologies of most of these studies.