On the syntax of color adjectives in DGS and NGT A corpus-based study

We study the position of color adjectives vis-à-vis the noun in Sign Language of the Netherlands and German Sign Language, based on naturalistic corpus data. The corpus data reveal that – contrary to previous claims in the literature – both sign languages show a clear preference for prenominal placement of color adjectives (Adj>N); yet, the postnominal order (N>Adj), which is not available in either Dutch or German, is also attested. We offer speculations on sociolinguistic, phonological, and semantic/pragmatic factors that might explain the variation, and we sketch a syntactic analysis that takes Adj>N to be the underlying Merge order.