Manual marking of plurality is not obligatory, and zero marking on the noun occurs frequently. In terms of overt marking, the stem can be reduplicated, and this comes in two forms: the stem and its reduplicants are either articulated at the same location, or at different locations. Another way of overt marking is producing a one-handed sign with two hands, either with or without reduplication. Additionally, some nouns can be marked for number by a change of handshape in a process called numeral incorporation. To be more precise, the following markers of plurality are observed in NGT:

 

    (i)         Zero marking;

  (ii)         The stem and the reduplicants are articulated at the same location;

(iii)         The stem is reduplicated sideward (without indicating spatial distribution);

(iv)         The stem is reduplicated at different locations, and the reduplications further indicate spatial distribution (discussed in MORPHOLOGY 4.2);

  (v)         The stem is reduplicated by using two hands for one-handed signs (and alternating movement);

(vi)          Numeral incorporation.

 

Options (i) – (iii) are allomorphs of each other. Option (iv) is a combination of plural marking and distributional marking and is therefore described in the next section (MORPHOLOGY 4.2). Option (v) is of a different nature than (ii) and (iii), as it is not a sequential process, but a simultaneous one. Moreover, it combines the previous options in the sense that it occurs in non-reduplicated as well as reduplicated form(s). Option (vi) is also a simultaneous process of number marking, and distinguishes itself from the previous options by involving handshape alternations instead of movement alternations. Note that its status in terms of nominal inflection is topic of debate, mostly because the process is limited to specific (semantic) groups of nouns.

Whether a noun undergoes reduplication (options (ii) and (iii)) or not (option (i)), and if yes, which type of reduplication, is dependent on several formal aspects of the noun – although some nouns accept several strategies (see below). Some researchers identified several phonological characteristics that can be of influence. As for location features, they distinguish nouns that are signed on the midsagittal plane, (i.e., in the horizontal middle of the signing space, “midsagittal nouns”) from nouns that are produced on the lateral side of the signing space (i.e., on the side of the signing hand,  “lateral nouns”), and nouns that are body-anchored from nouns that are not. As for the sign’s movement, they distinguish nouns with a simple movement from nouns with a complex movement, where the latter implies a circular, alternating or repeated movement. One study investigated plurality in NGT, taking these formal characteristics into account. I describe the earlier mentioned strategies (except for option (iv)) and their respective constraints following van her data.

Option (i), zero marking, means that no overt (number) marking is present, i.e., the singular form and plural form are identical. Zero marking can occur with all types of nouns that  were investigated. Two examples are the plural forms of café (café, Figure X.a), which is a two-handed noun with a complex (that is, repeated) movement, signed on the midsagittal plane in neutral space, and woman (vrouw, Figure X.b), which is a body-anchored noun with a simple movement, signed near the (ipsi) ear. The singular form and plural form are, in these cases, identical:

 

 

a. café / cafés (heeft (soms) al herhaling)	b. woman / women

Figure X. Two signs for which the singular and plural form are identical.

Based on van this study’s  data, I confirm one of the results of a previous work that zero marking is the default strategy for all nouns with a complex movement (as defined by others), such as café. The previous work  additionally mentions that it is the only strategy used with specific classes of nouns, such as body-part nouns, and this was also confirmed by an informant. Lastly, they described two formal constraints that my informant did not confirm, namely, that nouns which have a handling handshape, and nouns which are articulated at or above the crown of the head, cannot be reduplicated, and, thus, always receive zero marking. Two counterexamples to this claim are, for instance, the noun sock, with the handling 3-handshape,and crown, located at the crown of the head, which both can undergo simple reduplication. Still, it is likely that these nouns accept several pluralization strategies. I now turn to simple reduplication.

Under option (ii), simple reduplication, the stem and its reduplicants are articulated at the same location. The plurality study found that simple reduplication mainly occurs with body-anchored nouns, but can also apply to non-body-anchored nouns. In the next videos, the body-anchored ipsi-lateral noun problem (Video X.a) and midsagittal noun school (school, Video X.b) are reduplicated to express the plural forms. Note that the number of repetitions may vary (see also below).

 

 

 

A. problem++ ‘Problems’	school++ ‘Schools’

 

Other nouns that can undergo simple reduplication are, for example, injection (injectie), articulated on the non-dominant arm with a simple movement, department (afdeling), a two-handed midsagittal noun with a simple movement, and bag (tas), articulated on the ipsi-lateral side of neutral space with a repeated movement. As mentioned above, some nouns accept several strategies. The noun woman, for example, is observed with zero marking and with simple reduplication.

Under option (iii), the stem is articulated at its location in citation form, and the reduplicants move sideward, in the sense that each reduplicant is signed at a location that next to that of the preceding reduplicant. The reduplicants only express plurality in this case, and not also the spatial distribution of the entities (see option (iv)). The sign child (kind), for example, is often reduplicated sideward, but this form does generally not refer to multiple children located next to each other:

 

 

a. child	b. child++
Figure X. The singular child (a) and the reduplicated plural form children (b) (Signbank 2020)

 

 

 

As for one-handed signs, option (iii) is mainly observed with non-body-anchored nouns that are produced on the ipsi-lateral side of the neutral space, such as child and week (week). Additionally, I observed this strategy in the plural marking of the two-handed nouns country (land, Figure X.a and X.b) and type (type, Figure X.c and X.d), the former having a citation form in neutral space with two hands making contact, the latter having a citation form in neutral space with each hand on their own side of the midsagittal plane. 

 

 

 

a. country	b. country++

 

c. type (een soort)	d. type++

 

Option (iv) also concerns signs in which the reduplicants are articulated at different locations than the stem, but here, the reduplication additionally expresses the spatial distribution of the entities and does not necessarily go straightly sideward. Thus, the locations themselves are meaningful (in contrast to the locations in option (iii)). The process of spatial distribution is further described in MORPHOLOGY 4.2.

 

The plural markers described above all involve repetitions of the stem, and it is noteworthy that the number of repetitions may vary. This appears to be a matter of personal variation, although it may in some cases also indicate the factual number of entities, be influenced by the number of syllables in the co-articulated mouthing, or be motivated by speed of signing. In other words, in a context where a signer wants to refer to two children using a plural noun, s/he might produce the noun child with only one (sideward) repetition (Video X), meaning two movements in total to represent the actual number of children, but s/he might also articulate it with two repetitions, meaning three movements in total, to align the manual movements with the three syllables of the Dutch mouthing (i.e., [kin-de-ren] ‘children’; see also MORPHOLOGY 4.1.2). Still, no repetition (zero marking) or three repetitions may also occur.

 

 

 

a. child+

 

Option (v) is of a different character, because in this process, number is marked with a simultaneous marker instead of (or in addition to) a sequential marker: the two hands simultaneously produce a one-handed stem. This marker combines with option (i) – (iii) in the sense that the two hands may produce the stem(s) without reduplicants – note that the term “zero marking” is not applicable anymore in this case – or with reduplicants. In the plurality study’s  data, simultaneous use of the two hands occurred with lateral nouns, which could be body-anchored or signed in neutral space. In Figure X.a and X.b, the nouns problem (probleem) and child (kind) are shown, respectively, in two-handed form without reduplicants:

 

 

 

A.	b.

 

Figure X.a and X.b showed a combination of option (v) and option (i). Before I address the combination of option (v) and (ii), consider first Video X / Figure X to see a combination of option (v) and (iii): two-handedness and sideward reduplication. The first Video/Figure displays the lateral noun ‘things’ in two-handed form and sideward reduplication with a straight, simultaneous movement. In the second Video/Figure, the lateral noun ‘persons’ is shown, with an alternating movement:

 

 

 

A.	b.

Figure/Video X. The two-handed plural nouns thing+++ and person+++, both with sideward reduplication, but with different movement types: simultaneous vs. alternating.

 

There are no examples of clear combinations of option (v) and (iii) in the data for signs that are one-handed in citation form. As for signs that sometimes occur in two-handed singular form, it is obviously difficult to establish whether the two hands function as a plurality marker or are simply a two-handed articulation. However, some two-handed signs may be articulated with an alternating movement to express plurality combined with two-handedness (based on work on Austrian Sign Language).  To illustrate this: I encountered two different forms of plural two-handed articulations of human in the plurality data, one with simultaneous (repeated) movement (see Figure/Video X.a) and one with alternating (repeated) movement (see Figure/Video X.b). Since the singular form of human is also often articulated with two hands, it is difficult to decide whether the two-handedness is a marker of plurality for human. When the movement of the two hands is alternating, however, it cannot refer to a single entity and must therefore indicate plurality. Thus, I consider the form in X.b as a combination of option (v) and (ii):

 

 

guilder	three^guilders	five^guilders

 

euro	three^euro	five^euros

 

 

For both guilder and euro, it is possible to incorporate the numbers one to ten.

As for time-related signs, the following examples show the nouns hour and week, respectively, with incorporation of the numeral ‘two’:

 

two^hours	two^weeks

 

A similar case – similar since it resembles numeral incorporation but does not indicate a precise numeral, only plurality – is the handshape in the sign many_questions. In Figure X.a, the singular form question is shown, which is articulated with an extended index finger. In X.b., the plural form many_questions is articulated with four extended fingers; in contrast to the cases discussed above, this does not yield the meaning ‘four questions’. In a variant of X.b., the thumb is also extended, although this does not change the meaning. It is, however, not possible to have only two or three fingers extended. Furthermore, both variants can be signed with two hands, also without meaning alteration.

 

 

question (Adapted from Signbank 2020)	many_questions