William Tecumseh Sherman Fitch III (born 1963)http://homepage.univie.ac.at/tecumseh.fitch/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/FitchCV2011.pdf is an American

evolutionary biologist Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life for ...

and cognitive scientist at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hi ...

(

Vienna, Austria en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

) 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 by

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...

(i.e., the study of homologous and analogous structures and processes in a wide range of

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriat ...

). Fitch was born in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

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 research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

. From 1996 to 2000, he worked as a

Postdoctoral fellow A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to p ...

at MIT and

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

. He was a lecturer at

and a reader at the

University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...

, 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 in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865), achieving recognition for his com ...

, as did his father and

grandfather Grandparents, individually known as grandmother and grandfather, 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 maximum of four genetic ...

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 ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) 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. T ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fitch, W. Tecumseh Brown University alumni Academics of the University of St Andrews Harvard Fellows Academics of the University of Vienna Evolutionary psychologists Evolutionary biologists American cognitive scientists 1963 births Living people European Research Council grantees

Ability of monkeys to speak

Bibliography

See also

References

External links