W Tecumseh Fitch
Biographic Data
| ID | 101600 |
|---|---|
| NAME | W Tecumseh Fitch |
| GIVEN NAMES | W Tecumseh |
| FAMILY NAME | Fitch |
| SIGNATURE | FITCH W T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Vienna |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1830-0928 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Music as a coevolved system for social bonding
Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution of musicality have focused mainly on the value of music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care, coalition signaling, and group cohesion. Synthesizing and extending previous proposals, we argue that social bonding is an overarching function that unifies all of these theories, and that musicality enabled social bonding at larger scales than grooming and other bonding …
Music as a coevolved system for social bonding
Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution of musicality have focused mainly on the value of music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care, coalition signaling, and group cohesion. Synthesizing and extending previous proposals, we argue that social bonding is an overarching function that unifies all of these theories, and that musicality enabled social bonding at larger scales than grooming and other bonding …
Common marmosets are sensitive to simple dependencies at variable distances in an artificial grammar
Recognizing that two elements within a sequence of variable length depend on each other is a key ability in understanding the structure of language and music. Perception of such interdependencies has previously been documented in chimpanzees in the visual domain and in human infants and common squirrel monkeys with auditory playback experiments, but it remains unclear whether it typifies primates in general. Here, we investigated the ability of c…
The Biology and Evolution of Speech: A Comparative Analysis
I analyze the biological underpinnings of human speech from a comparative perspective. By first identifying mechanisms that are evolutionarily derived relative to other primates, we obtain members of the faculty of language, derived components (FLD). Understanding when and why these evolved is central to understanding the evolution of speech. There is little evidence for human-specific mechanisms in auditory perception, and the hypothesis that sp…
Origins of Musicality
Cultural evolution: Lab-cultured musical universals
Laryngeal Descent
Why formal semantics and primate communication make strange bedfellows
Do we represent intentional action as recursively embedded? The answer must be empirical. A comment on Vicari and Adenzato (2014)
Rank‐dependent grooming patterns and cortisol alleviation in Barbary macaques
Flexibly adapting social behavior to social and environmental challenges helps to alleviate glucocorticoid (GC) levels, which may have positive fitness implications for an individual. For primates, the predominant social behavior is grooming. Giving grooming to others is particularly efficient in terms of GC mitigation. However, grooming is confined by certain limitations such as time constraints or restricted access to other group members. For i…
Evolution of Language
Genes, Language, Cognition, and Culture: Towards Productive Inquiry
The Queen Mary conference on “Integrating Genetic and Cultural Evolutionary Approaches to Language,” and the papers in this special issue, clearly illustrate the excitement and potential of trans-disciplinary approaches to language as an evolved biological capacity (phylogeny) and an evolving cultural entity (glossogeny). Excepting the present author, the presenters/authors are mostly young rising stars in their respective fields, and include sci…
The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve
We argue that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation. We suggest how current developments in linguistics can be profitably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. We submit that a distinction should be made between the faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB) and in the narrow sense (FLN). FLB includes a sensory-motor system, a conceptual-inten…
The Evolution of Human Language: Biolinguistic Perspectives
The way language as a human faculty has evolved is a question that preoccupies researchers from a wide spread of disciplines. In this book, a team of writers has been brought together to examine the evolution of language from a variety of such standpoints, including language's genetic basis, the anthropological context of its appearance, its formal structure, its relation to systems of cognition and thought, as well as its possible evolutionary a…
The Evolution of Language
Language, more than anything else, is what makes us human. It appears that no communication system of equivalent power exists elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Any normal human child will learn a language based on rather sparse data in the surrounding world, while even the brightest chimpanzee, exposed to the same environment, will not. Why not? How, and why, did language evolve in our species and not in others? Since Darwin's theory of evolution,…
Bipedal tool use strengthens chimpanzee hand preferences
Animal Cognition and Animal Rights Do Animals Think? By Clive Wynne. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004
The evolution of the language faculty: Clarifications and implications
The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?
We argue that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation. We suggest how current developments in linguistics can be profitably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. We submit that a distinction should be made between the faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB) and in the narrow sense (FLN). FLB includes a sensory-motor system, a conceptual-inten…
The evolution of speech: A comparative review
Morphology and development of the human vocal tract: A study using magnetic resonance imaging
Magnetic resonance imaging was used to quantify the vocal tract morphology of 129 normal humans, aged 2–25 years. Morphometric data, including midsagittal vocal tract length, shape, and proportions, were collected using computer graphic techniques. There was a significant positive correlation between vocal tract length and body size (either height or weight). The data also reveal clear differences in male and female vocal tract morphology, includ…
The Origin and Diversification of Language
The Origin and Diversification of Language. Nina G. Jablonski and Leslie C. Aiello. eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 202 pp
Vocal tract length and formant frequency dispersion correlate with body size in rhesus macaques
Body weight, length, and vocal tract length were measured for 23 rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) of various sizes using radiographs and computer graphic techniques. Linear predictive coding analysis of tape-recorded threat vocalizations was used to determine vocal tract resonance frequencies (“formants”) for the same animals. A new acoustic variable is proposed, “formant dispersion,” which should theoretically depend upon vocal tract length. For…
Vocal production in nonhuman primates: Acoustics, physiology, and functional constraints on “honest” advertisement
The physiological mechanisms and acoustic principles underlying sound production in primates are important for analyzing and synthesizing primate vocalizations, for determining the range of calls that are physically producible, and for understanding primate communication in the broader comparative context of what is known about communication in other vertebrates. In this paper we discuss what is known about vocal production in nonhuman primates, …
Responses to natural and synthetic phee calls by common marmosets ( Callithrix jacchus )
Captive adult common marmosets ( Callithrix jacchus ) produce whistlelike “phee” calls in two contexts: in the home cage, where phee calls may function as part of territorial marking behavior, and when separated from social companions, where phee calls may function to reunite conspecifics. Natural and synthesized calls representing the acoustic structure of male and female calls in each context were presented to adult marmosets in a playback para…
Bipedal tool use strengthens chimpanzee hand preferences
The Biology and Evolution of Speech: A Comparative Analysis
I analyze the biological underpinnings of human speech from a comparative perspective. By first identifying mechanisms that are evolutionarily derived relative to other primates, we obtain members of the faculty of language, derived components (FLD). Understanding when and why these evolved is central to understanding the evolution of speech. There is little evidence for human-specific mechanisms in auditory perception, and the hypothesis that sp…
Cultural evolution: Lab-cultured musical universals
Responses to natural and synthetic phee calls by common marmosets ( Callithrix jacchus )
Captive adult common marmosets ( Callithrix jacchus ) produce whistlelike “phee” calls in two contexts: in the home cage, where phee calls may function as part of territorial marking behavior, and when separated from social companions, where phee calls may function to reunite conspecifics. Natural and synthesized calls representing the acoustic structure of male and female calls in each context were presented to adult marmosets in a playback para…
Vocal production in nonhuman primates: Acoustics, physiology, and functional constraints on “honest” advertisement
The physiological mechanisms and acoustic principles underlying sound production in primates are important for analyzing and synthesizing primate vocalizations, for determining the range of calls that are physically producible, and for understanding primate communication in the broader comparative context of what is known about communication in other vertebrates. In this paper we discuss what is known about vocal production in nonhuman primates, …
Vocal tract length and formant frequency dispersion correlate with body size in rhesus macaques
Body weight, length, and vocal tract length were measured for 23 rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) of various sizes using radiographs and computer graphic techniques. Linear predictive coding analysis of tape-recorded threat vocalizations was used to determine vocal tract resonance frequencies (“formants”) for the same animals. A new acoustic variable is proposed, “formant dispersion,” which should theoretically depend upon vocal tract length. For…
Morphology and development of the human vocal tract: A study using magnetic resonance imaging
Magnetic resonance imaging was used to quantify the vocal tract morphology of 129 normal humans, aged 2–25 years. Morphometric data, including midsagittal vocal tract length, shape, and proportions, were collected using computer graphic techniques. There was a significant positive correlation between vocal tract length and body size (either height or weight). The data also reveal clear differences in male and female vocal tract morphology, includ…
The Origin and Diversification of Language
The Origin and Diversification of Language. Nina G. Jablonski and Leslie C. Aiello. eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 202 pp
The evolution of speech: A comparative review
The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?
We argue that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation. We suggest how current developments in linguistics can be profitably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. We submit that a distinction should be made between the faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB) and in the narrow sense (FLN). FLB includes a sensory-motor system, a conceptual-inten…
The evolution of the language faculty: Clarifications and implications
Animal Cognition and Animal Rights Do Animals Think? By Clive Wynne. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004
The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve
We argue that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation. We suggest how current developments in linguistics can be profitably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. We submit that a distinction should be made between the faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB) and in the narrow sense (FLN). FLB includes a sensory-motor system, a conceptual-inten…
The Evolution of Human Language: Biolinguistic Perspectives
The way language as a human faculty has evolved is a question that preoccupies researchers from a wide spread of disciplines. In this book, a team of writers has been brought together to examine the evolution of language from a variety of such standpoints, including language's genetic basis, the anthropological context of its appearance, its formal structure, its relation to systems of cognition and thought, as well as its possible evolutionary a…
The Evolution of Language
Language, more than anything else, is what makes us human. It appears that no communication system of equivalent power exists elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Any normal human child will learn a language based on rather sparse data in the surrounding world, while even the brightest chimpanzee, exposed to the same environment, will not. Why not? How, and why, did language evolve in our species and not in others? Since Darwin's theory of evolution,…
Bipedal tool use strengthens chimpanzee hand preferences
Genes, Language, Cognition, and Culture: Towards Productive Inquiry
The Queen Mary conference on “Integrating Genetic and Cultural Evolutionary Approaches to Language,” and the papers in this special issue, clearly illustrate the excitement and potential of trans-disciplinary approaches to language as an evolved biological capacity (phylogeny) and an evolving cultural entity (glossogeny). Excepting the present author, the presenters/authors are mostly young rising stars in their respective fields, and include sci…
Evolution of Language
Do we represent intentional action as recursively embedded? The answer must be empirical. A comment on Vicari and Adenzato (2014)
Rank‐dependent grooming patterns and cortisol alleviation in Barbary macaques
Flexibly adapting social behavior to social and environmental challenges helps to alleviate glucocorticoid (GC) levels, which may have positive fitness implications for an individual. For primates, the predominant social behavior is grooming. Giving grooming to others is particularly efficient in terms of GC mitigation. However, grooming is confined by certain limitations such as time constraints or restricted access to other group members. For i…
Laryngeal Descent
Why formal semantics and primate communication make strange bedfellows
Cultural evolution: Lab-cultured musical universals
The Biology and Evolution of Speech: A Comparative Analysis
I analyze the biological underpinnings of human speech from a comparative perspective. By first identifying mechanisms that are evolutionarily derived relative to other primates, we obtain members of the faculty of language, derived components (FLD). Understanding when and why these evolved is central to understanding the evolution of speech. There is little evidence for human-specific mechanisms in auditory perception, and the hypothesis that sp…
Origins of Musicality
Common marmosets are sensitive to simple dependencies at variable distances in an artificial grammar
Recognizing that two elements within a sequence of variable length depend on each other is a key ability in understanding the structure of language and music. Perception of such interdependencies has previously been documented in chimpanzees in the visual domain and in human infants and common squirrel monkeys with auditory playback experiments, but it remains unclear whether it typifies primates in general. Here, we investigated the ability of c…
Music as a coevolved system for social bonding
Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution of musicality have focused mainly on the value of music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care, coalition signaling, and group cohesion. Synthesizing and extending previous proposals, we argue that social bonding is an overarching function that unifies all of these theories, and that musicality enabled social bonding at larger scales than grooming and other bonding …
Music as a coevolved system for social bonding
Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution of musicality have focused mainly on the value of music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care, coalition signaling, and group cohesion. Synthesizing and extending previous proposals, we argue that social bonding is an overarching function that unifies all of these theories, and that musicality enabled social bonding at larger scales than grooming and other bonding …
Psychology (18 works) · Animal Vocal Communication and Behavior (12 works) · Biology (12 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Linguistics (11 works) · Cognitive science (10 works) · Language and cultural evolution (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Neuroscience (6 works) · Sociology (6 works)