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Cited by 594

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 58 of the 58 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The Evolution of Language

Fitch, W. Tecumseh·2010
DOI 10.1017/cbo9780511817779
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Abstract

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, questions about the origin of language have generated a rapidly-growing scientific literature, stretched across a number of disciplines, much of it directed at specialist audiences. The diversity of perspectives - from linguistics, anthropology, speech science, genetics, neuroscience and evolutionary biology - can be bewildering. Tecumseh Fitch cuts through this vast literature, bringing together its most important insights to explore one of the biggest unsolved puzzles of human history.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1017/cbo9780511817779

Cites

58 of 58 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The evolution of language required a shift in referential communication from specific isolated unlearned signals to a general, flexible, learned, socially transmitted, infinitely combinable, functionally unconstrained form of communication, absent in the animal world.

    “The evolution of language seemingly required a shift in referential communication away from specific isolated unlearned signals applied by animals to concrete events in the present to a general, flexible, learned and socially transmitted, infinitely combinable, and functionally unconstrained form of communication; something entirely absent in the animal world (Fitch, 2010; Hurford, 2014).”

    From The origins of language in teaching (2017) · cites this paper as Fitch, 2010

  • Studies have shown that infants prefer to listen to infant-directed speech, that it is more effective in getting infants' attention, and that it helps infants to learn words faster, compared to standard speech.

    “Studies have shown that infants prefer to listen to this type of speech, that it is more effective in getting and infants’ attention, and that it helps infants to learn words faster, compared to standard speech (Thiessen et al., 2005; Fitch, 2010).”

    From The origins of language in teaching (2017) · cites this paper as Fitch, 2010

  • Compared to other primates, humans appear particularly adept at inferring the meaning of the utterances of others.

    “For instance, compared to other primates, humans appear particularly adept at inferring the meaning of the utterances of others (Bloom, 1997, 2000; Fitch, 2010).”

    From The origins of language in teaching (2017) · cites this paper as Fitch, 2010

  • This holistic intonational system could be a first step in achieving phrase-level meanings and prosodic scaffolds before lexicality was introduced, in which case the system would be better characterized as one of pure prosody than pure phonology.

    “Hence, this could be a first step in achieving phrase-level meanings and prosodic scaffolds before lexicality was introduced (Fitch, 2010), in which case the system would be better characterized as one of pure prosody than pure phonology.”

    From A Joint Prosodic Origin of Language and Music (2017) · cites this paper as Fitch, 2010

  • Lexical tone is a purely linguistic feature that emerged after the separation of language from the musilanguage precursor.

    “I now firmly reject that idea in favor of lexical tone being a purely linguistic feature that emerged after the separation of language from the musilanguage precursor.”

    From A Joint Prosodic Origin of Language and Music (2017) · cites this paper as Fitch, 2010

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Metadata

Authors
Fitch, W. T.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Published
2010-04-01
DOI
10.1017/cbo9780511817779
Cited by
594
References
58
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified, 796 d)

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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

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