This paper addresses a linguistically motivated question of classification of functional data, namely the statistical classification of languages according to their rhythmic features. This is an important open problem in phonology. The analysis is based on the information provided by the...

We compute the speed of convergence of the canonical Markov approximation of a chain with complete connections with summable decays. We show that in the -topology the approximation converges at least at a rate proportional to these decays. This is proven by explicitly constructing a coupling...

Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) have proven to be very effective in optimizing intractable problems in many areas. However, real problems including specific constraints are often overlooked by the proposed generic models. The authors' goal here is to show how knowledge engineering techniques can be...