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 Handout: Johnson Spectrum Handout; 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**
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
Week 4
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. 72-88Handout: Complete IPA ChartLecture 2 Sept 25: SOWL 2: Non-Pulmonic Consonants (Airstream Mechanisms) and Tone
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; and Project 1 Intro
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
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
How Technology has Changed What It's Like to be Deaf: Rebecca Knill Ted talk (14min)
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]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
Reading due: Speech Synthesis: Toward a "Voice" for All. H. Timothy Bunnell Markowitz on "Voice Biometrics",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 Zoom Lecture Speech Technologies continued and Online Class Evals
Note that there is an outside chance that plans for Dec 2 and 4 may be swapped; I'll let update here as soon as I can
Lecture 2 Dec 4 No class meeting work on your final presentations
Zoom meetings by appointment 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: Aug 2025
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