W. Tecumseh Fitch is a Reader in Psychology at the University of St Andrews. He studies the evolution of cognition and communication in animals and man, focusing on the evolution of speech, music and language. He is interested in all aspects of vocal communication in terrestrial vertebrates, particularly vertebrate vocal production in relation to the evolution of speech and music in our own species.
Introduction
Part I. The Lay of the Land: 1. Language from a biological perspective
2. Evolution
3. Language
4. Animal cognition and communication
Part II. Meet the Ancestors: 5. Meet the ancestors
6. The last common ancestor
7. The hominid fossil record
Part III. The Evolution of Speech: 8. The evolution of the human vocal tract
9. The evolution of vocal control
10. Modelling the evolution of speech
Part IV. Phylogenetic Models of Language Evolution: 11. Language evolution before Darwin
12. Lexical protolanguage
13. Gestural protolanguage
14. Musical protolanguage
15. Conclusions and prospects.
