The first contrast that is often made in the literature on compounds is the one between native (this section) and loan compounds (MORPHOLOGY 1.2). Native compounds in NGT have emerged independently from spoken Dutch. They are classified as such either if Dutch does not employ compounds for the same concepts (but single words or phrases), or if the compounds in NGT are structurally different from related compounds in Dutch – meaning that NGT combines other lexemes to yield the same meaning than Dutch. Cases in which an NGT compound employs the same lexemes as a corresponding Dutch compound but uses them in a different order are, following the SignGram Blueprint, not considered native compounds; these are categorized as modified loans (MORPHOLOGY 1.2.2).
Modality specific for sign languages are the two types of native compounds that can be observed: sequential (MORPHOLOGY 1.1.1) and simultaneous (MORPHOLOGY 1.1.2) compounds. The former relates to signs that are combined sequentially, i.e. signed one after the other, and the latter to signs that are produced at the same time. Both are discussed in depth below.