Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA21039 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 15 Nov 2001 12:16:36 GMT Message-ID: <3BF3AFB3.B2548352@mmu.ac.uk> Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 12:06:11 +0000 From: Bruce Edmonds <b.edmonds@mmu.ac.uk> Organization: Centre for Policy Modelling X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en To: JOM announcements list <jom-emit-ann@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: New JoM-EMIT paper: Syntactic Structure in Birdsong by William Majoros Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: JOM-EMIT@sepa.tudelft.nl
Syntactic Structure in Birdsong:
Memetic Evolution of Songs or Grammars?
by William Majoros
Celera Genomics
Abstract
Introduction
1 - Anecdotal Evidence for Syntactic Structure in House Finch Song
2 - Evolutionary Advantages of Grammar-Based Song Generation
3 - Overview of the Experimental Approach
4 - Methods
4.1 - Sound Recording
4.2 - Selection and Transcription of Recordings
4.3 - Grammar Induction
4.4 - Contingency Table Analysis
4.5 - Simulation of Memetic Evolution of Songs
4.6 - Regression Analysis
5 - Results
5.1 - Properties of House Finch Data
5.2 - Properties of Simulated Data
6 - Discussion
7 - Conclusion
Acknowledgments
References
Abstract
In order to ascertain whether the units of memetic
transmission and recombination in the birdsong of a particular
species of finch exist at the level of individual songs or instead
at the level of grammar models, a large number of songs were
subjected to grammar induction techniques and the resulting
grammars analyzed for key structural properties considered
indicative of the existence of an underlying grammar. The
weight of evidence provided by this approach was judged by
applying the same analyses to the results of a genetic algorithm
applied to a synthetic repertoire of songs and comparing the
results. Memetic evolution applied directly to song elements,
as simulated by the genetic algorithm, was found to generate
models very similar to those inferred from the House Finch
song, thereby demonstrating that the problem of discerning
between these two competing hypotheses for explaining the
syntactic structure observed in House Finch song is not easily
solved using the limited data obtainable in the field. This
underscores the importance of experimental rigor when
studying memetic systems, and leaves open the question of
how to confidently determine the actual level at which memes
are operating in a particular system.
Available at:
http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit/2002/vol6/majoros_w.html
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