Starting to make sense: Further developing a nonsense sign repetition task

Abstract

The nonsense sign repetition task that was developed for Sign Language of the Nether-lands in 2015 (the NGT-NSRT) is investigated further in this paper. Specifically, I look into differences in performances on the NGT-NSRT between deaf signers and CODAs, into the effect of movement complexity on the scores of the participants, and into the re-lationship between phoneme-based scores and binary correct/incorrect scores. It turns out that the deaf signers score significantly better than the CODAs, and that the partici-pants score significantly worse on signs with a combined movement compared to signs with a single movement. Furthermore, phoneme-based scores and correct/incorrect scores are significantly correlated. No evidence was found for a difference in complexity between signs with a hand-internal movement and signs with a path movement. Sug-gestions for further research and an alternative analysis of phonological complexity, as adopted by Vink (2018), are discussed.