Abstract:

The degree of transparency, i.e. the extent to which one-to-one relationships between meaning and form exist, varies across languages. Within the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), various spoken languages have already been investigated. However, transparency in signed languages is an unexplored field. This study aims to start research in this area by studying one specific sign language, namely Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). The purpose of this investigation is to establish the place of NGT on the transparency hierarchy that has been postulated for spoken languages, and subsequently, to tentatively answer the question whether transparency patterns are modality-specific. By means of consulting existing research on NGT and by analysing the Corpus NGT, I examine 13 transparency features operating between and within the different levels of FDG. By comparing the results to 30 spoken languages, it turns out that NGT is located in the middle of the transparency hierarchy, i.e. NGT behaves on average regarding the degree of transparency. Moreover, NGT follows the likelihood of transparent manifestations determined for spoken languages perfectly. Therefore, the tentative answer, purely based on the results for this particular sign language, is that transparency patterns are not modality-specific.

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