Verbal predicates in Flemish sign language (VGT) and South African sign language (SASL)

In 2006 and 2007 a project on differences and similarities between SASL and VGT was set up for which a number of grammatical mechanisms and structures were being compared across the two signed languages, using a corpus consisting of similar VGT and SASL-data of a various nature. The overall goal was to contribute to a further understanding of the degree of similarity between unrelated signed languages. Part of the grammatical comparison focused on word order issues (published in Vermeerbergen et al., 2007). However, while annotating and analysing the data a number of problems emerged. These concerned sentences with two or more elements which at first sight seemed to function like verbal predicates. We shall present a cross-linguistic analysis of these sentences and try to determine the grammatical/typological status of the predicate-like elements. It will be shown that determining that status is not straightforward.In 2006 and 2007 a project on differences and similarities between SASL and VGT was set up for which a number of grammatical mechanisms and structures were being compared across the two signed languages, using a corpus consisting of similar VGT and SASL-data of a various nature. The overall goal was to contribute to a further understanding of the degree of similarity between unrelated signed languages. Part of the grammatical comparison focused on word order issues (published in Vermeerbergen et al., 2007). However, while annotating and analysing the data a number of problems emerged. These concerned sentences with two or more elements which at first sight seemed to function like verbal predicates. We shall present a cross-linguistic analysis of these sentences and try to determine the grammatical/typological status of the predicate-like elements. It will be shown that determining that status is not straightforward.B