The Ling Space | The Evolution of Language: An Interview with Dr. Tecumseh Fitch @thelingspace | Uploaded 7 years ago | Updated 1 hour ago
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: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780521677363
You can find links and PDFs to a lot of his work in the piece here on his website:
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/tecumseh.fitch/publications/
Fitch's article on monkey vocal tracts:
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/12/e1600723
The Mark Liberman post on this topic:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=29735
Fitch on Darwin's musical proto-language hypothesis:
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/tecumseh.fitch/2010/08/05/musical-protolanguage-darwins-theory-of-language-evolution-revisited/
Our previous interviews:
Sali Tagliamonte: youtu.be/tapgQNcKuFo
Anne Charity Hudley: youtu.be/xKjrnrsiKv4
Lisa Pearl: youtu.be/EOfGgqPeeC4
Daniel Dennett: youtu.be/30eOI6pL-lU
Steven Pinker: youtu.be/piJBmPh5jFU
Find us on all the social media worlds:
Tumblr: http://thelingspace.tumblr.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheLingSpace
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thelingspace
And at our website, http://www.thelingspace.com !
You can also find our store at the website, http://thelingspace.storenvy.com
We also have forums to discuss this interview, and linguistics more generally.
Looking forward to next time!
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: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780521677363
You can find links and PDFs to a lot of his work in the piece here on his website:
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/tecumseh.fitch/publications/
Fitch's article on monkey vocal tracts:
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/12/e1600723
The Mark Liberman post on this topic:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=29735
Fitch on Darwin's musical proto-language hypothesis:
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/tecumseh.fitch/2010/08/05/musical-protolanguage-darwins-theory-of-language-evolution-revisited/
Our previous interviews:
Sali Tagliamonte: youtu.be/tapgQNcKuFo
Anne Charity Hudley: youtu.be/xKjrnrsiKv4
Lisa Pearl: youtu.be/EOfGgqPeeC4
Daniel Dennett: youtu.be/30eOI6pL-lU
Steven Pinker: youtu.be/piJBmPh5jFU
Find us on all the social media worlds:
Tumblr: http://thelingspace.tumblr.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheLingSpace
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thelingspace
And at our website, http://www.thelingspace.com !
You can also find our store at the website, http://thelingspace.storenvy.com
We also have forums to discuss this interview, and linguistics more generally.
Looking forward to next time!
