A Grammar of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT)

In the sign language literature, it is commonly assumed that movement – either path movement or secondary movement (see PHONOLOGY 1.3) – constitutes the nucleus of the syllable, i.e., movement makes up the syllable. A prototypical monosyllabic sign is, for instance, the noun feeling (Figure 2.39).This sign has a clear path movement in which the dominant hand makes a circling movement on the ches

Figure 2.39. The sign feeling (Crasborn et al. 2020, symbols added)

.

 

The number of syllables of a sign is equal to the number of sequential path movements. Thus, a repeated secondary movement does not count as a sequential movement, which makes the verb type (Figure 2.40), which contains repeated finger wiggling, also monosyllabic:

 

Figure 2.40. The sign type (Crasborn et al. 2020, symbols added).

 

When a syllable consists of two simultaneous movements (i.e., a path and secondary movement combined), it constitutes a heavy syllable, whereas a single movement counts as a light syllable. The signs feeling and type are thus made up of a single light syllable. In contrast, the verb throw (Figure 2.41) consists of a single heavy syllable, as a path movement and a handshape change are combined:

 

 

Figure 2.41. Start and end configuration of the sign throw (Crasborn et al. 2020).

 

The noun table (Figure 2.42), on the other hand, is disyllabic, since it contains first a horizontal path movement followed by a vertical path movement:

  

Figure 2.42. The disyllabic sign table (Crasborn et al. 2020, symbols added).

 

Disyllabic signs can be compressed to monosyllabic signs due to fast signing or to compounding processes. This phenomenon is paid attention to in PHONOLOGY 3.2.2 in the next chapter.

Syllables in NGT generally adhere to three constraints: the movement complexity constraint, the selected finger constraint, and the one location constraint. While these well-formedness constraints by themselves are not strictly prosodic in nature, we discuss them here, as they hold at the level of the syllable, a prosodic domain. According to the movement complexity constraint, heavy syllables consist of the combination of a path movement and a secondary movement, and not of two secondary movements (see also PHONOLOGY 1.3). The sign for the month march (Figure 2.43), for example, obeys this rule. The sign includes an articulator-internal movement in which the handshape changes from  to   and a path movement in which the hands move outwards; therefore, it is a monosyllabic sign with a heavy syllable.

 

Figure 2.43. Start and end configuration of the sign march (Crasborn et al. 2020).

 

There are, however, exceptions to this rule, namely signs in which two articulator-internal movements are combined: for example, the sign for internet (Figure 2.44a, also mentioned in PHONOLOGY 1.3.2) and the sign for ambulance (Figure 2.44b). Both signs consist of a rotation of the lower arm combined with the opening of the (initially closed) hand.

 

a. internet

b. ambulance

 

Figure 2.44. Start and end configuration of the signs internet (a) and ambulance (b).

 

According to the selected finger constraint, the selected fingers must not change within the syllable. In other words, while it is possible, for example, to change the orientation or aperture of the selected fingers, the fingers that are selected for the handshape configuration will remain the same. Since this is a constraint at the syllable level, NGT signs with multiple syllables do not necessarily comply with this constraint. In addition, signs that involve handshapes from the manual alphabet or counting system may also violate the constraint, but these are considered non-native signs  see PHONOLOGY 1.1.3). Compare the native monosyllabic sign email in Figure 2.45a, which dheres to the selected finger constraint, to the non-native initialized sign blue  in Figure 2.45b, which does not: