Guest Lecturer Juan Uriagereka from the UMD talked to us about various pieces of evidence for when humans developed higher level cognitive abilities relating to language. Slides are here.

Szabo gave a crash course on grammars, evolutionary/genetic linguistics, and how they tie into knots (both this kind and this kind).

Isaac Eaton gave a lecture about the many (pretty hilarious) ways languages change over time, including phonetic, phonological, and semantic changes.