‘Real data are messy’: Considering the cross-linguistic analysis of constituent ordering in Australian Sign Language (Auslan), Vlaamse Gebarentaal (VGT) and Irish Sign Language (ISL)

Abstract

This chapter explores some of the issues relating to data collection, description, analysis, and cross-linguistic comparison in the investigation of constituent ordering in signed languages. First, we present a brief overview of the existing literature on constituent order in signed languages and discuss a widely applied elicitation task used for this purpose. Then we present a small comparative analysis of declarative utterances in three signed languages using the elicitation task. This includes the methodology and a description of the guidelines we attempted to follow for the collection and interpretation of the data. After discussing the results for the three signed languages individually and in comparison, we conclude by discussing some of the practical problems in data collection and analysis we encountered, and close with some more general and theoretical issues that arose from this study.