HANDE SEVGİ

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Linguistics at Harvard University. My research investigates how manner information is encoded across modalities, including sign languages, spoken languages, and gesture, and what this reveals about the structure of human language.

A central goal of my work is to understand how modality shapes linguistic representation and interpretation. By bringing together evidence from experimental semantics, syntax, and multimodal communication, I examine how event components are expressed, constrained, and interpreted across different linguistic systems. Sign languages play a crucial role in this research, as they offer a unique perspective on the interaction between iconicity, compositionality, and grammatical structure.

My dissertation focuses on the encoding of manner in sign language classifiers, spoken language adverbials, and co-speech gesture, with particular attention to their interaction with negation, focus, and information structure. I argue that manner forms a distinct semantic class whose behavior cannot be reduced to modality-specific effects or iconicity alone. Through a series of experimental studies, I show that manner expressions pattern systematically across modalities, while also revealing modality-sensitive constraints on interpretation.

Before joining Harvard, I completed my M.A. in Linguistics at Boğaziçi University, where my thesis examined age of acquisition effects in Turkish Sign Language (TİD), focusing on complex structures such as classifiers and coordination. This work continues to inform my interest in the relationship between grammatical structure, acquisition, and modality.

My CV can be found here.