A Grammar of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT)

Many of the examples are borrowed from Postma’s (2013) bachelor’s thesis on compounds in NGT, although the pictures of the signs are my own. Postma described most of the subtypes that are also mentioned in this chapter, and provided useful examples for every category. She made use of the paper dictionary of the NGC (Schermer & Koolhof (eds). 2009), in which she studied all signs that were categorized as ‘compound’ by the authors of the dictionary. This process yielded 313 signs, which she categorized as being native or loaned, sequential or simultaneous, endocentric or exocentric, coordinate or subordinate, and left-headed or right-headed, providing the reader with a neat overview of possible compounds in NGT. We complemented some of the examples with examples of Ulrika Klomp, these are mentioned without any reference.

            Bussemaker (2000) was the first to investigate compounds in NGT more extensively. She selected around 345 compound signs from CD-ROMS that functioned as a dictionary. Although she did not specify where the CD-ROMS were published, it is highly likely that they were developed by the NGC, also because a reference to similar CD-ROMS is made in Harder, Koolhof & Schermer (2003). These 345 compounds functioned as her corpus. Additionally, she elicited data, using 34 pictures that represented compounds of her earlier selection, and 28 pictures that represented one of the items which were part of some of the compounds. She had three participants for the elicitation task, who were 18-year-old (near-)native signers. Each participant had to describe the pictures to another participant, who functioned as interlocutor, and this was recorded.

We also consulted another source, which we do not refer to directly in this chapter, namely de Ronde (2018), which is a master’s thesis into youth language in NGT. We checked what de Ronde wrote about the formation of new signs in youth language in NGT and whether (native) newly-formed compounds were mentioned. However, we found no relevant examples.