Lecture | Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
Negation in Dutch Sign Language
- Date
- Thursday 28 May 2026
- Time
- Serie
- Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 0.30
Abstract
In sign languages, negation is expressed by means of two types of markers: manual markers (negative signs) and non-manual markers (most commonly: headshake). We know from typological research that sign languages around the world differ with respect to how these two types of markers interact with each other to express negation. In this talk, I will zoom in on the properties of negation in one sign language – Dutch Sign Language (NGT) – where the headshake plays a relatively prominent role. In NGT, a sentence can be negated solely by means of a headshake; the addition of a manual negative marker is not required. The headshake also tends to spread over relatively large parts of the sentence. We will take a good look at the possible spreading patterns of the headshake in NGT, and we’ll entertain to what extent these patterns have the potential to inform us about the syntactic structure of NGT. We will have a look at phenomena including Neg-raising, Negative Concord, and even the kinematics of headshake along the way.