I am a post-doctoral researcher at Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC) which is a philanthropically endowed academic computer science institute.
I am interested in how simultaneous structure of sign languages is organized to convey the semantic and pragmatic notions in terms of the organization of manual and nonmanual domains. I am using behavioral, online, and computational methodologies to understand this nature. I was previously a post-doctoral researcher at Dr. Diane Brentari's Sign Language Linguistics Laboratory at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. I worked on two-verb constructions in the project 'Two Verb Predicates in Sign Languages: Typological Variation and Emergence' funded by National Research Foundation (NSF). The project focuses on two-verb constructions across American Sign Language (ASL), Turkish Sign Language (TİD), Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL), and Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL). My dissertation project focused on the modal signs and the co-occurring nonmanual markers in TİD under Dr. Ronnie B. Wilbur's supervision. The final analysis showed that nonmanual markers affect the propositional meaning and the signer certainty separately from manual signs. I argued that nonmanual markers are distinct morphemes rather than being part of the lexical manual signs. Outside the academia, I enjoy spending time with my retriever-mix rescue dog, Oscar, going on hikes, learning biking in the city, and swimming. |