معرفی
Daphna Heller serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto, located in Sidney Smith Hall, Room 4088. Her academic work bridges theoretical linguistics with experimental methodologies to investigate core aspects of human language processing.
Research interests focus on psycholinguistics, experimental semantics/pragmatics, and referential processing. Key specialties include perspective-taking in communication, probabilistic models of reference, language processing in understudied languages (particularly Hebrew and Niuean), and the cognitive mechanisms underlying definite descriptions. Her work integrates theoretical linguistics with experimental paradigms including eye-tracking, corpus analysis, and cross-linguistic comparison.
Recent publications reveal strong trends in perspective integration theory and referential choice mechanisms, with increasing focus on mental state attribution in communication. The 2020-2025 publications demonstrate methodological diversity spanning psycholinguistic experimentation, cross-linguistic analysis of Niuean and Hebrew, silent gesture studies, and computational modeling of pragmatic phenomena.
- 2022 Faculty Research Fellow, Jackman Humanities Institute
Heller's research program examines how speakers and listeners manage reference in context, with particular attention to the probabilistic weighing of multiple perspectives. Her work on Hebrew linguistics contributes to understanding Semitic language processing, while Niuean studies provide insights into ergative language comprehension. Current projects appear to extend the Multiple Perspectives Theory to question-answer dynamics and mental state attribution in communication.
