We were really excited to get a chance to talk with Dr. Tecumseh Fitch! Dr. Fitch is an evolutionary biologist and cognitive scientist who received his PhD from Brown University, and is now a professor in the Department of Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna. He’s published extensively on the evolution of speech, language, and music, and is the author of the 2010 book The Evolution of Language.
In our interview, we discussed the following topics:
his recent research on whether it's anatomy or neurology holding back monkeys from speech
his thoughts on Darwin's hypotheses about how language may have evolved
how to come up with good hypotheses about how language evolved, given that it doesn't leave fossils
what he believes is different about humans that led to the development of language
... and more! Thanks again to Dr. Fitch for speaking with us.
His book, The Evolution of Language, can be found here: www.indiebound.org/book/9780521677363
You can find links and PDFs to a lot of his work in the piece here on his website:
homepage.univie.ac.at/tecumseh.fitch/publications/
Fitch's article on monkey vocal tracts:
advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/12/e1600723
The Mark Liberman post on this topic:
languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=29735
Fitch on Darwin's musical proto-language hypothesis:
homepage.univie.ac.at/tecumseh.fitch/2010/08/05/mu…
Our previous interviews:
Sali Tagliamonte: • Interview with Sali Tagliamonte
Anne Charity Hudley: • Interview with Anne Charity Hudley
Lisa Pearl: • Interview with Lisa Pearl
Daniel Dennett: • Interview with Daniel Dennett - Remas...
Steven Pinker: • Interview with Steven Pinker
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