William Tecumseh Sherman Fitch III (born 1963) is an American

evolutionary biologist Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes such as natural selection, common descent, and speciation that produced the diversity of life on Earth. In the 1930s, the discipline of evolutionary biol ...

and

cognitive scientist Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...

at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (, ) is a public university, public research university in Vienna, Austria. Founded by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, Duke Rudolph IV in 1365, it is the oldest university in the German-speaking world and among the largest ...

(

Vienna, Austria Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

) where he is co-founder of the Department of Cognitive Biology. He was elected a Member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

in 2025. 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 by

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...

(i.e., the study of homologous and

analogous Analogy is a comparison or correspondence between two things (or two groups of things) because of a third element that they are considered to share. In logic, it is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as oppose ...

structures and processes in a wide range of

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

). Fitch was born in

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

and received his B.A. (1986) in biology and his Ph.D. (1994) in Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences from

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

. From 1996 to 2000, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

and

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. He was a lecturer at

and a reader at the

University of St Andrews The University of St Andrews (, ; abbreviated as St And in post-nominals) is a public university in St Andrews, Scotland. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest of the four ancient universities of Scotland and, f ...

, before moving to a professorship at the

in 2009. He bears the name of his third-generation great-grandfather, Civil War General

William Tecumseh Sherman William Tecumseh Sherman ( ; February 8, 1820February 14, 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a General officer, general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865), earning recognit ...

, as did his father and

grandfather Grandparents, individually known as grandmother and grandfather, or Grandma and Grandpa, are the parents of a person's father or mother – paternal or maternal. Every sexually reproducing living organism who is not a genetic chimera has a m ...

before him.

Ability of monkeys to speak

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".

Bibliography

* 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 review
", Biology and Philosophy 20: 193–230. * Fitch, W. T. (2006).
The biology and evolution of music: A comparative perspective
", Cognition 100: 173–215.

References

External links

Homepage of W. Tecumseh Fitch
at 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 the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) 2010 in

Torino Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fitch, W. Tecumseh Brown University alumni Academics of the University of St Andrews Harvard Fellows Academic staff of the University of Vienna Evolutionary psychologists American evolutionary biologists American cognitive scientists 1963 births Living people European Research Council grantees Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences

Ability of monkeys to speak

Bibliography

See also

References

External links