W. Tecumseh Fitch

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

Fitch was born in Boston and received his B.A. (1986) in biology and his Ph.D. (1994) in Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences from Brown University. From 1996 to 2000, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT and Harvard University. He was a lecturer at Harvard University and a reader at the University of St Andrews, before moving to a professorship at the University of Vienna in 2009.

He bears the name of his third-generation great-grandfather, Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, as did his father and grandfather 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".