Embedded Files
GE Seminar (Dani Byrd):
Fall 2025
Fall 2025
Weekly Schedule Subject to Change — Always check back for current status
DSWM = textbook Discovering Speech, Words, and Mind by Byrd & Mintz (associated website); also available electronically from the Libraries and as part of OER (Open Educational Resources). Readings from Intro to Comm Disorders (ICD) are provided as pdfs below.Weekly Schedule Subject to Change — Always check back for current status
Textbook (DSWM & ICD) readings support material primarily covered in lecture. Items labeled "Fun" or "Optional" are optional, but encouraged, time-allowing."Handouts" are related directly to lecture material; I recommend printing [or at least downloading] them to bring to class on the day indicated and for later studying.
You will not necessarily be reminded regarding when homework is due; keeping up with this is your responsibility.
Week 1
Lecture 1 Aug 26: Introductions and Course Overview
Read and bookmark: Syllabus and this Weekly Schedule [also bookmarked on our Slack channel]Review: Collection of USC Support ResourcesReadings Due: DSWM Chapter 1;What is Correct Language" Ed Finegan;Prof Anne Curzan "What makes a word 'real'?" (17 min video)
Vocal Tract Anatomy
Reading Due: DSWM Chapter 2 Section 1 pp. 23-39Odyssey "Speech: Dances of the Vocal Tract" by Rubin & GoldsteinFun Website: [dissection videos] Slo-Mo Gargling; When Something Goes Down the "Wrong Tube" ; Tongue Muscles
Please install Slack and fill out info sheet linked there on the class channel (which you should automatically be a member of).
Please install Slack and fill out info sheet linked there on the class channel (which you should automatically be a member of).
Lecture 2 Aug 28: English Sounds
Reading Due: DSWM Chapter 2 Section 1 Two handouts for you to print and keep: mini IPA Chart for English Sounds; English Contrasts. (These are combined into a single pdf here, albeit slightly smaller.)Fun Website: Real-time MRI IPA Chart collected here at USC
Week 2
Sept 1 Monday is a University Holiday
Lecture 1 Sept 2: English Transcription
Reading Due: DSWM Chapter 2 Section 1 pp. 39-50Handouts: Bring handouts from Week 1Lecture 2 Sept 4: Waveforms and Class Practice Transcription
Reading Due: DSWM Chapter 2 Section 2 pp. 51-56Homework One released English Transcription; due on September 12
Week 3
Lecture 1 Sept 9: Speech Acoustics: Source Filter Theory
Reading Due: DSWM Chapter 2 Section 2 pp. 51-64Two Handouts: Johnson on Spectrum (handout/reading); Source Filter Handout (courtesy of Louis Goldstein)Fun Website: The Resonant Bridge
Sept 9 Optional Tuesday Night Activity Intro Zoom chats with Professor Byrd [info will be in the Slack]
Lecture 2 Sept 11: Spectrograms, Formants and Vowels
Reading Due: cont. DSWM review Chap 2 Section 2Handout: Vowel spectra handout (from A Course in Phonetics )Optional Supplementary Material: Kevin Russell's Acoustic Phonetics pagesFun Website: Make your own spectrogram (requires microphone access)
**Homework One Due, September 12**
Week 4
For Homework Two, you get a CHOICE. Pick one: TWO-A is on identifying articulatory gestures from MRI video of the vocal tract. TWO-B is on identifying phonetic events in a waveform of an utterance.
Homework Two-A released Identifying Consonant Articulation, due Sept 26
Homework Two-B released Waveform Exercise, due Sept 26
Lecture 1 Sept 16: Global English and Varieties of English
Reading Due: DSWM Chapter 3 Section 2 pp. 89-97 NYT Everyone has an Accent; Californian Spoken Here [pdf] (altaonline)Jamila Lyiscott TedSalon 2014 "3 Ways to Speak English" (we'll listen to this in class)
Optional: Linguists hear an accent begin (Scientific American, 5 min audio);
Fun websites: 22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From One Another; Your 'personal' dialect map (1 pt extra credit if you email me your result); The Cambridge Online survey and its results; Accents of English (JC Wells); The speech accent archive
Lecture 2 Sept 18: Varieties of English (cont.)
Nicole Holliday's lecture "It's in the tone" [28 min video]Week 5
Lecture 1 Sept 23: Sounds of the World's Languages [SOWL] 1: Consonants and Vowels
Reading Due: DSWM Chapter 3 Section 1 pp. 72-88, Top 7 countries where people speak the most languagesHandout: Complete IPA ChartLecture 2 Sept 25: SOWL 2: Tone, Phonation Type, & Non-Pulmonic Consonants (Airstream Mechanisms)
Reading Due: A Course in Phonetics Ladefoged & Johnson pp. 144-159 (pdf) with accompanying language samplesFun Website: Find Indigenous Languages Around the Globe; "What it means to sound gay?" (pdf)--Washington Post July 28 2015Fun website: What is vocal fry?
**Homework Two due Sept 26
Homework Three Released: English Variety due Oct 19
Week 6
Lecture 1 Sept 30: Review of Brightspace test interface; HW 3 and Project 1 alerts
Lecture 2 Oct 2: Puzzles of Speech Perception
Reading Due: DSWM Chapter 5 Section 1 pp. 114-127Myers "From Sound to Meaning" Physics Today 2017Video: Your Brain: Perception Deception Documentary NOVA PBS (53 minutes; suggest watching [at least] to 40 min);Optional:
Video from Professor Pascal Wallisch "Neuroscientist Answers Illusion Questions" (22min video)For after lecture: Does Sensory Modality Matter? Not for speech perception by L. Rosenblum
Week 7
Lecture 1 Oct 7: TEST 1 ( covers through Week 5)
Thurs Oct 9 is a USC Holiday
Reading to finish before next week's lectures: Your Mental Dictionary
Week 8
Lecture 1 Oct 14: Bilingualism
Reading Due: Language Files 12 Chapter 8, File 8.5 (starts p. 345); BBC Scotland Dr. Thomas Bak Podcast on the benefits of bilingualism (28 min, pls listen at least to 18min)Leon Panetta: Americans are losing out because so few speak a second language. Being Bilingual Changes the Architecture of Your Brain (Wired)Optional: From the New Yorker on Hyperglots "The mystery of people who speak dozens of languages"; "How the Finnish survive without small talk"; What language does your state speak; Washington Post Global Opinions Op-Ed 2020 on Canada's Official Languages Act [pdf].
Random Fun Websites: 20 awesomely 'untranslatable' words from around the world; 37 maps that explain how America is a nation of immigrants (Vox)
Optional Reading on Heritage Languages: Language induces an identity crisis for the children and grandchildren of Lati, "Forgetting my first language" Jenny Liao, The New Yorker
Lecture 2 Oct 16: Phonology, the Mental Lexicon, and Speech Errors
Reading Due before lecture: Your Mental Dictionary**Homework 3 due Oct 19**
Week 9
Lecture 1 Oct 21: Intro to clinical considerations: Clinicians and Populations
and Project Intro
Reading: Intro to Comm Disorders: Chapter 1 pp. 2-8 and Chapter 2 pp. 26-33
And selecting a speaker for your interview
**Interview Written Report Assignment Released, due Nov 16**
Lecture 2 Oct 23 Guest Speaker Professor Toben Mintz—Reading and Developmental Dyslexia
Reading Due: DSWM Chapter 7 (pp. 182-205)Supplemental reading if you'd like to learn more about reading disorders: Intro to Comm Dis Chapter 6
Week 10
READ COMPLETE ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS FOR FINAL RESEARCH TOPIC ORAL PRESENTATION
Lecture 1 Oct 28: Human Hearing
and Intro to Project 2 and its Research
Supplementary material: American Speech and Hearing Association
ASHA Websites on Hearing Loss and on Newborn Hearing Screening;
Optional video: The beautiful, mysterious science of how you hear: Jim Hudspeth Ted talk (15 min)--we will watch part of this in class
Lecture 2 Oct 30: Deafness, Hearing Loss, and Hearing Technologies
Reading Due: Intro to Comm Disorders: Chapter 12 333-352, 360-363, 369-372; DSWM Chapter 11 pp. 266-276 (up to "Voice Disorders")."This common habit can ruin your hearing and increase dementia"; Cochlear Implants can bring the experience of sound [The Conversation]
Handout: Common Misconceptions About Hearing [website] [pdf]Required Video: How Technology has Changed What It's Like to be Deaf: Rebecca Knill TED talk (14min, 2020)
Optional: Bionic Hearing: When to get a cochlear implant NYT FDA clears path for hearing aids to be sold over the counter; Hearing devices significantly improve social lives of those with hearing loss
A pretty good online hearing test from Dr. Ir. Stéphane Pigeon -- need silence and headphones OR the Apple iPodsPro and the newest iOS
Between Friday and Monday: Choose one of these two award-winning documentary movies to watch (of course, if you want, you can watch both). Movie A is about deafness and the emergence of the cochlear implant 20 years ago; Movie B is about stuttering.
Extra Credit for writing up three questions/observations about the movie; due via email.
Documentary A: "Sound and Fury" (1hr 30m) from 2000
Required brief pre-reading/watching BEFORE movie (note the differing dates for each of these materials, as these ideas have matured over time):- 2010: "The pediatric cochlear implant: Genocide or medical miracle?" (download link at left)
- 2018: NYT Op Ed "A clearer message on cochlear implants."
Documentary B: "When I Stutter" (director John Gomez; 1hr7min)
Week 11
Lecture 1 Nov 4: Signed Languages
Reading Due: DSWM Chapter 9 pp. 224-234 onlyOptional Websites: Do Sign Languages have Accents?; Sign Language Isn't Universal; Map of Sign Language Families;
Three English to ASL Video Dictionaries: Signing Savvy; Handspeak; Lifeprint Optional Video: Variation in ASL: www.talkingblackinamerica.org 27 minOptional Reading: Helmuth "From the mouths (and hands) of babes" Science Magazine (2 pages)
Lecture 2 Nov 6: Speech Disorders: Stuttering, Cleft Palate, Degenerative Neuromotor Disorders
Reading Due: DSWM Chapter 11 remainder (pp. 276-281); Intro to Comm Disorders Chapter 8 225-235, 243-246Video: In a short (8 min) documentary, John Hendrickson describes the frustration of having a stutter (New York Times)Optional Readings: The Atlantic "What Joe Biden Can’t Bring Himself to Say"Audio performance: This American Life: Act One Time Bandit SCROLL DOWN to find this item (24min)
Saturday Nov 8: RESEARCH TOPIC AND INITIAL SOURCES for oral presentation due to Professor Byrd for approval.
READ COMPLETE ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS.
Week 12
Nov 11 Veteran's Day holiday no classes
Lecture 2 Nov 13: Voice Disorders: Laryngeal dysfunction, oropharyngeal cancer and remediations
Reading Due: Intro to Comm Disorders Chapter 9 247-261Washington Post: "What men should know about cancer that spreads through oral sex" [pdf]We have a vaccine for six cancers; why are less than half of kids getting it?Info About Vaping: Vaping and Public Health; E-cigarettes: Facts, stats and regulations; What Vaping Does to the Body (YouTube Institute of Human Anatomy [includes dissection video])
Resources for quitting vaping: KickIt CA, Truth Initiative, smokefree.gov
Week 13
**Interview due EOD Monday November 16** Turn in via email--word doc or pdf; no google docs
Lecture 1 Nov 18: Guest lecture Professor Mary Byram Washburn: The Brain in Language Breakdown: Aphasia
Reading: Introduction to Comm Disorders Chapter 7 179-204, Chapter 10 288-290When speech goes wrong: Evidence from aphasia (Sheila Blumstein)Lecture 2 Nov 20: Test 2 : only covers Week 8 through Week 13, i.e. not cumulative
Week 14
Lecture 1 Nov 25: Speech Technologies
Online Class Evals
The Ethics of a Deepfake Anthony Bourdain Voice Helen RosnerFun Websites: "How computers parse the ambiguity of everyday language"; "Alexa, Siri, and Google Don’t Understand a Word You Say"State of the art: WaveNet and EATS; Kid tries to train Google Home; Meet the Woman Behind Amazon Alexa;
A commercial with Susan Bennett (the voice of Siri) [1 min ]; Resources: A collection of some speech synthesis sites
Nov 26-30 Thanksgiving is a USC Holiday
Week 15
Lecture 1 Dec 2 Guest Lecture from Professor Kristina Lerman on Chatbots You will gather in our classroom but Prof Byrd and likely our speaker will be on zoom, so bring headphones. Zoom link (if needed) will be on Slack.
Lecture 2 Dec 4 No class meeting work on your final presentations
Zoom meetings by appointment this week to work on final presentations.
Final Exam Meeting December 16 11am-1pm In Person Oral Presentations (attendance required)
in regular classroom
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Date Last Modified: Sept 2025
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