W. Tecumseh Fitch
W Tecumseh Fitch | |
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| Born | William Tecumseh Sherman Fitch III 1963 |
| Alma mater | Brown University(B.A., Ph.D.) |
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| Doctoral advisor | Philip Lieberman |
William Tecumseh Sherman Fitch III(born 1963)[1]is an Americanevolutionary biologistandcognitive scientistat theUniversity of Vienna(Vienna, Austria) where he is co-founder of the Department of Cognitive Biology.
Fitch studies the biology and evolution of cognition and communication in humans and other animals, and in particular the evolution of speech, language and music. His work concentrates on comparative approaches as advocated byCharles Darwin(i.e., the study ofhomologousandanalogousstructures and processes in a wide range ofspecies).
Fitch was born inBoston[1]and received hisB.A.(1986) in biology and hisPh.D.(1994) in Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences fromBrown University.From 1996 to 2000, he worked as apostdoctoral fellowatMITandHarvard University.He was a lecturer atHarvard Universityand a reader at theUniversity of St Andrews,before moving to a professorship at theUniversity of Viennain 2009.
He bears the name of his third-generation great-grandfather, Civil War GeneralWilliam Tecumseh Sherman,as did his father andgrandfatherbefore him.[2]
Ability of monkeys to speak
[edit]Fitch and colleagues used x-ray recordings of a macaque monkey named Emiliano producing various sounds to make a model of Emiliano's vocal tract. The model showed that a macaque could produce a variety of vowel and non-vowel phonemes adequate for intelligible speech. In a simulation, "Emiliano" said "Will you marry me?" in a recognizable manner, demonstrating that the anatomy of monkeys does not limit them from producing complex speech. In conclusion, Fitch stated that "If a human brain were in control, they could talk".[3][4]
Bibliography
[edit]- Fitch, W. T. (2010). The Evolution of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Fitch, W. T. (1997). "Vocal tract length and formant frequency dispersion correlate with body size in rhesus macaques,"Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 102: 1213–1222.
- Fitch, W. T. (2000). "The evolution of speech: a comparative review,"Trends Cog. Sci. 4, 258–267.
- Fitch, W.T. and D. Reby (2001), "The descended larynx is not uniquely human".Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, 268(1477): 1669–1675.
- Hauser, M. D.,Chomsky, N.& Fitch, W. T. (2002). "The Language Faculty: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?" Science 298: 1569–1579.
- Fitch, W. T., &Hauser, M. D.(2004). "Computational constraints on syntactic processing in a nonhuman primate".Science 303: 377–380.
- Fitch, W. T. (2005). "The evolution of language: A comparative reviewArchived2017-08-09 at theWayback Machine,"Biology and Philosophy 20: 193–230.
- Fitch, W. T. (2006). "The biology and evolution of music: A comparative perspectiveArchived2017-10-26 at theWayback Machine,"Cognition 100: 173–215.
See also
[edit]- Biolinguistics
- Biomusicology
- Cognitive biology
- Comparative psychology
- Digital infinity
- Descended larynx
- Evolutionary psychology
- Hoover (seal)
- Origin of language
- Origin of speech
- Origin of music
- Vocal learning
References
[edit]- ^ab"Tecumseh Fitch – Academic Website"(PDF).Retrieved2023-11-30.
- ^"Why monkeys can't talk—and what they would sound like if they could".www.science.org.Retrieved2022-04-06.
- ^"Why Monkeys Can't Speak Like Us?".2016-12-21. Archived fromthe originalon 2018-06-17.Retrieved2018-04-15.
- ^"Why monkeys can't talk—and what they would sound like if they could".2016-12-09.
External links
[edit]- Homepage of W. Tecumseh Fitchat homepage.univie.ac.at
- Darwin's Theory of Music and Language Evolution
- Science at the interfaces: the biology of music and language— a keynote speech at theEuroScienceOpen Forum (ESOF) 2010 inTorino
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