What do conditional clauses look like in Sign Language of the Netherlands?
Ulrika Klomp investigates several grammatical phenomena in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT), as part of the descriptive grammar that she is writing. Her article on the manual and non-manual markers that are used in conditional clauses was recently published. Conditional clauses express a condition, and the consequence of it is expressed in the main clause. An example is 'If it keeps on snowing, I'll take the bus'. The first part, 'if it keeps on snowing', is the conditional clause. Only little information was available on this type of subordinate clause in NGT, so many questions regarding its realization were still open: which signs may function as manual markers? Are there specific non-manual markers (such as raised eyebrows)- And is the main clause always preceded by the conditional clause? - Raised eyebrows. In this study, the Corpus NGT was used to analyze naturalistic data.