USC Interview with Dani Byrd

(USC Phonetics Research)

Last wednesday I drove all the way out to USC in LA because Dani Byrd, the Vice Dean of student affairs at the USC Dornsife college and a professor of Linguistics at USC, was kind enough to let me interview her. Dr. Byrd specializes in phonetics, the study and classification of speech sounds. She is currently using MRI's to look at how the tongue, larynx, pharynx,vocal fold, etc. move when we talk. The video of these MRI's are actually on the USC SAIL website. She showed me the difference between the movement in the mouth when people talk in different languages. For example she played an MRI that was of her mouth while she was saying an English sentence; then she played a MRI of her colleague speaking in Tamil, an Indian dialect. I found it really interesting that you could see the back of the throat being utilized more with Tamil than it was utilized in English. It was also really hard to see each individual movement of each individual part of the vocal system because speech happens really fast; therefore, by having someone sing (Shown above) instead of talk the movement is slower and the one is able to better observe the different parts of the vocal tract being utilized. She also gave me names of some computational linguists I could contact and maybe do mentor ship with.

When I asked her what books I should read that pertain to linguistics she gave me a copy of her book (pictured to the left). I have started using this book as one of my sources. Although I am not particularly interested in phonetics, it is an important aspect of linguistics. I need to understand phonetics if I want to go into computational linguistics and especially if I want to study how one can create artificial speech. Dr. Bryd told me that studying phonetics can help us understand and even correct or help with stroke victims who loose speech abilities and natural born speech impediments. My Interview with Dr. Bryd inspired to study Linguistics to help people that have speech disabilities. Her broad knowledge of so many topics also showed me how diverse of a field linguistics is because it ranges from the hard sciences to social sciences to history and everything in between.

Independent Component 1 Approval

1.  Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 hours.I plan to take a college class at Cal-Poly Pomona for my independent component. The class is a Junior level class and is taught by mentor Karen Russikoff. The class is called acquisition of Language. The class covers the development of the first language from birth through adolescence  Adult and child acquisition of second and subsequent languages. Linguistic, biological, and social factors that facilitate and retard language learning. Mrs. Edwards and Mrs. Ortega took this class when they were at Cal-Poly.

2.  Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence.
I will Provide a transcript of the class with the my grade on it.  I will also bring in any essays and/ or homework that I completed during the class.

3.  And explain how what you will be doing will help you explore your topic in more depth.
This class is one of the classes that people take when they are majoring in Linguistics. The class will give me a better understanding of how a language is acquired which is a big part of Linguistics.

Second Interview Questions

1.  Who is your mentor and where do they work? 
My Mentor I Karen Russikoff. She is currently a Professor at Cal-Poly Pomona. 

2.  What five questions will ask them about their background?
What is your highest level of education?
Where did you receive your degree(s) from?
Outside of teaching at Cal-Poly how else are you involved in the field of Linguistics?
What did you write your dissertation on?
Was Linguistics always your main focus of study?

Blog 5 Project Reflection and Working EQ

The Pentagon: 

(1) Positive Statement: What positive thing happen as a result of what you have completed so far?

---As a result of all the things I have completed so far my knowledge of the field of Linguistics has grown. Also what I have done has helped solidify linguistics as what I want to major in in college. 

(2) EQ Content:  Pick a piece of research or your interview.  How has it helped you improve your understanding of your topic?

---My interview with my mentor helped improve my understanding of Linguistics immensely. My mentors field of work is in applied Linguistics, meaning she uses what she learns about Linguistics and applies it to teaching English to ESL (English as a Second Language) students. She told me that Linguistics is divided into many sub sections such as morphology, semantics, special language study, neuro-liguistics, psycho-linguistics, Computational Linguistics and many more. The people who study linguistics either go into applied Linguistics or do research. I think that I would like to study computational linguistics because technology is the future and I do not wish to go into academia
. 
(3) What has worked for you so far in the senior project?

---Doing things a head of time has definitely worked for me during this project. I hope I will be able to keep this habit up when young scholars classes start.

(4) What hasn't worked so far?  

---I feel like everything has worked pretty well so far; The only thing I have had problems with is the font size and the format of my blog.

(5) Finding Value: 
What is a potential question you would like to study this year?  (working EQ)

---What is the future of languages?

•  What do you plan to do for mentorship?  If you haven't found a mentor yet, then discuss where you are currently looking and who you are talking to to find it. 

--- For my mentorship I plan on sitting in on my mentors ESL classes and observing how language is learned.I also have contacted people at UCLA and USC to see if they will let me help with research or help collect data.