A Grammar of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT)

A phonological phrase (PP) consists of one or more phonological words. There may be rules or constraints that only apply to phonological phrases and not to other prosodic units, but this prosodic domain has not been systematically investigated for NGT. One study, however, suggests that the PP may be marked by spreading of mouthing, when the mouthing covers multiple lexical signs, rather than a lexical and a functional sign. The sentence in Example 4 could then be analyzed as containing two PPs (and four PWs):

                       later                                                              koffie

4.            [[later]_pw [ix₁₊₂]_pw]_pp   [[coffee]_pw [drink]_pw]_pp ?

                ‘Shall we have coffee later?’

Translation of mouthings: later coffee

Additionally, spreading of the non-dominant hand (h2) may be a marker of the phonological phrase, since the non-dominant hand may be held in space while multiple signs are articulated on the dominant hand, but not necessarily across a full intonational phrase. The sentence in Example 5 comes from the Corpus NGT and could be prosodically analyzed as indicated in the example (in this example, we provide multiple tiers for different non-manual markers and the two hands; spreading of h2 is indicated by ‘---').

                eyes           blink

                head          nod

                mouth                           blijf                        stil

5.            h1                           [[keep]_pw        [still     ix₁]_pw      [arm]_pw           [drive]_pw]_pp

                h2                           [[ix₁                 imitate:stretched-arm-----------]_pw]_pp

                                   ‘I kept my left arm still and stretched outside while driving.’

                                   (CNGT0519, S26, 01:22.330-01:23.710)