Hande Sevgi

I am a linguist whose research lies at the intersection of sign language linguistics, semantics, morphology, and event structure from cross-linguistic and cross-modal perspectives. I received my Ph.D. in Linguistics from Harvard University. My work investigates how events are represented across sign languages, spoken languages, and gesture, and what these patterns reveal about the architecture of grammar and the nature 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. I am also interested in expressivity across languages, especially how grammar, iconicity, and linguistic form convey sensory and affective meaning across different modalities and grammatical systems.

My dissertation “Manner Modification Across Modalities: Insights from Gesture, Sign, and Spoken Language”, advised by Kathryn Davidson, Jonathan Bobaljik and Kathryn Franich, investigates how events are encoded in sign language classifiers, spoken language adverbials, and co-speech gesture, with particular attention to manner modification and its 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 in linguistic systems across modalities.

At Harvard, I was affiliated with the Meaning and Modality Lab, where I also served as lab manager.

Before joining Harvard, I completed my M.A. in Linguistics at Boğaziçi University. My thesis “Effects of Age of Acquisition on Morphosyntactic Structures in Turkish Sign Language: Evidence from Classifiers”, advised by Kadir Gökgöz, with Balkız Öztürk and Nihan Ketrez on the committee, investigated 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.