Danielle Thomas

Lecturer & Spanish Minor Advisor

Danielle Thomas received her PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Toronto and has lectured on topics related to Spanish, formal linguistics, and communication studies at universities in Canada, the US and Ghana.

Danielle’s research mainly focuses on the acquisition and use of morphosyntax in contexts of bilingualism. She is especially interested in the interplay between cognition and experience in language outcomes for different types of bilinguals, and how to account for bilingual-related variability.

Danielle came to UMass Amherst in 2017 after pursuing professional opportunities in the private sector, and so she is also interested in teaching and learning for the professions. She is involved in developing courses and programming so that students can develop bilingual professional skills, and so that the campus and non-campus community can come together to develop communicative and sociocultural understandings for both social and professional purposes.

Research Areas

Bilingualism

Language acquisition

Romance morphosyntax

Spanish phonetics

Courses Recently Taught

Spanish 311, Advanced Spanish Grammar

Spanish 312, Spanish Oral and Written Expression

Spanish 357, Spanish for the Service Professions

Spanish 465, Business Spanish

Spanish 470, General View of Hispanic Linguistics

Spanish 697 RM  Research Methods in Language Acquisition

Spanish 796, Proficiency & the Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism