A Grammar of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT)

The location of the sign is the place where the sign is articulated. This can be on or in relation to the body or in front of the signer’s torso; this latter location is called ‘neutral space’. Locations on the body can further be specified into several sublocations, sometimes also called settings. The phonologically distinct locations identified for NGT are listed in the table below and exemplified in Figure 2.13.

Whether locations are phonologically distinct from each other can be tested through minimal pairs. The signs between and season,  day and white . berlin and spain, birthday and pet  all form minimal pairs since they differ only in location, as illustrated in Figures 2.14 to 2.17.

 

Table 2.9. The phonologically distinct locations and glossed examples.

 

 

 

 

                                                                        

a. police	b. white	c. feeling

 

Figure 2.13 – part 1. The signs police (a), white (b) and feeling (c), illustrating the locations ‘head’, neck’ and ‘trunk’, respectively (Crasborn et al. 2020, symbols added).  

 

 

                                                                      

d. birthday	e. stubborn	f. school

 

Figure 2.13 – part 2. The signs birthday (d), stubborn (e) and school (f), illustrating the locations ‘arm, weak hand’ and ‘neutral space’, respectively (Crasborn et al. 2020, symbols added).

 

 

                                                                                           

a. between	b. season

 

Figure 2.14. The minimal pair between (a) and season (b), differing only in location: neutral space vs. weak hand.

                                                                                                            

 

a. day	b. white

 

Figure 2.15. The minimal pair day (a) and white (b), differing only in location: head vs. neck (Crasborn et al. 2020, symbols added).

 

 

                                                                                                          

a. berlin	b. spain

 

Figure 2.16. The minimal pair berlin (a) and spain (b), differing only in location: head vs. trunk.

 

                                                                                                                  

a. birthday	b pet

 

Figure 2.17. The minimal pair birthday (a) and pet (b), differing only in location: arm vs. neutral space (2.17a Crasborn et al. 2020, symbols added).

 

 

Path movements (see PHONOLOGY 1.3.1) in NGT signs start and end in the same main area. A sign that starts at the head, for example, will therefore generally not end at the trunk. This is called the one location constraint. This constraint and known exceptions will be discussed further in PHONOLOGY 2.1.1.

             As for the distribution of the locations of NGT signs, we present two tables here: Table 2.10 shows the frequencies of main locations as found by van der Kooij; whereas Table 2.11 shows more recent and more representative data, extracted from the NGT Signbank database (Crasborn et al. 2020).The distribution in Table 2.11 is based on 3,510 datapoints from the Signbank database. The exact composition of this table is explained in the section Information on Data and Consultants at the end of this chapter.The two tables show a similar order in terms of frequency, but a slightly different distribution.

 

 

Table 2.10. Distribution of relative frequency of main locations, based on van der Kooij (2002).

 

 

 

 

Table 2.11. Distribution of relative frequency of main locations, based on the NGT Signbank, (Crasborn et al. 2020).

 

Location	Frequency (%)
Neutral space	50
Head	23
Weak hand	12
Trunk	9
Arm	1
Neck	1
Other	3

 

 

These data show that neutral space is the specified location for the majority of signs in NGT.