Grammatical Evolution

Grammatical Evolution: Evolutionary Automatic Programming in an Arbitrary Language provides the first comprehensive introduction to Grammatical Evolution, a novel approach to Genetic Programming that adopts principles from molecular biology in a simple and useful manner, coupled with the use of grammars to specify legal structures in a search. Grammatical Evolution's rich modularity gives a unique flexibility, making it possible to use alternative search strategies - whether evolutionary, deterministic or some other approach - and to even radically change its behavior by merely changing the grammar supplied. This approach to Genetic Programming represents a powerful new weapon in the Machine Learning toolkit that can be applied to a diverse set of problem domains.

This handbook offers a comprehensive treatise on Grammatical Evolution (GE), a grammar-based Evolutionary Algorithm that employs a function to map binary strings into higher-level structures such as programs. GE's simplicity and modular nature make it a very flexible tool. Since its introduction almost twenty years ago, researchers have applied it to a vast range of problem domains, including financial modelling, parallel programming and genetics. Similarly, much work has been conducted to exploit and understand the nature of its mapping scheme, triggering additional research on everything from different grammars to alternative mappers to initialization. The book first introduces GE to the novice, providing a thorough description of GE along with historical key advances. Two sections follow, each composed of chapters from international leading researchers in the field. The first section concentrates on analysis of GE and its operation, giving valuable insight into set up and deployment. The second section consists of seven chapters describing radically different applications of GE. The contributions in this volume are beneficial to both novices and experts alike, as they detail the results and researcher experiences of applying GE to large scale and difficult problems. Topics include: • Grammar design • Bias in GE • Mapping in GE • Theory of disruption in GE · Structured GE · Geometric semantic GE · GE and semantics · Multi- and Many-core heterogeneous parallel GE · Comparing methods to creating constants in GE · Financial modelling with GE · Synthesis of parallel programs on multi-cores · Design, architecture and engineering with GE · Computational creativity and GE · GE in the prediction of glucose for diabetes · GE approaches to bioinformatics and system genomics · GE with coevolutionary algorithms in cybersecurity · Evolving behaviour trees with GE for platform games · Business analytics and GE for the prediction of patient recruitment in multicentre clinical trials

Dynamic environments abound, encompassing many real-world problems in fields as diverse as finance, engineering, biology and business. A vibrant research literature has emerged which takes inspiration from evolutionary processes to develop problem-solvers for these environments. 'Foundations in Grammatical Evolution for Dynamic Environments' is a cutting edge volume illustrating current state of the art in applying grammar-based evolutionary computation to solve real-world problems in dynamic environments. The book provides a clear introduction to dynamic environments and the types of change that can occur. This is followed by a detailed description of evolutionary computation, concentrating on the powerful Grammatical Evolution methodology. It continues by addressing fundamental issues facing all Evolutionary Algorithms in dynamic problems, such as how to adapt and generate constants, how to enhance evolvability and maintain diversity. Finally, the developed methods are illustrated with application to the real-world dynamic problem of trading on financial time-series. The book was written to be accessible to a wide audience and should be of interest to practitioners, academics and students, who are seeking to apply grammar-based evolutionary algorithms to solve problems in dynamic environments. 'Foundations in Grammatical Evolution for Dynamic Environments' is the second book dedicated to the topic of Grammatical Evolution.

Joan Bybee and her colleagues present a new theory of the evolution of grammar that links structure and meaning in a way that directly challenges most contemporary versions of generative grammar. This study focuses on the use and meaning of grammatical markers of tense, aspect, and modality and identifies a universal set of grammatical categories. The authors demonstrate that the semantic content of these categories evolves gradually and that this process of evolution is strikingly similar across unrelated languages. Through a survey of seventy-six languages in twenty-five different phyla, the authors show that the same paths of change occur universally and that movement along these paths is in one direction only. This analysis reveals that lexical substance evolves into grammatical substance through various mechanisms of change, such as metaphorical extension and the conventionalization of implicature. Grammaticization is always accompanied by an increase in frequency of the grammatical marker, providing clear evidence that language use is a major factor in the evolution of synchronic language states. The Evolution of Grammar has important implications for the development of language and for the study of cognitive processes in general.

State of the Art on Grammatical Inference Using Evolutionary Method presents an approach for grammatical inference (GI) using evolutionary algorithms. Grammatical inference deals with the standard learning procedure to acquire grammars based on evidence about the language. It has been extensively studied due to its high importance in various fields of engineering and science. The book's prime purpose is to enhance the current state-of-the-art of grammatical inference methods and present new evolutionary algorithms-based approaches for context free grammar induction. The book's focus lies in the development of robust genetic algorithms for context free grammar induction. The new algorithms discussed in this book incorporate Boolean-based operators during offspring generation within the execution of the genetic algorithm. Hence, the user has no limitation on utilizing the evolutionary methods for grammatical inference. Discusses and summarizes the latest developments in Grammatical Inference, with a focus on Evolutionary Methods Provides an understanding of premature convergence as well as genetic algorithms Presents a performance analysis of genetic algorithms as well as a complete look into the wide range of applications of Grammatical Inference methods Demonstrates how to develop a robust experimental environment to conduct experiments using evolutionary methods and algorithms

How does human language work? How do we put ideas into words that others can understand? Can linguistics shed light on the way the brain operates? Foundations of Language puts linguistics back at the centre of the search to understand human consciousness. Ray Jackendoff begins by surveying the developments in linguistics over the years since Noam Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. He goes on to propose a radical re-conception of how the brain processes language. This opens up vivid new perspectives on every major aspect of language and communication, including grammar, vocabulary, learning, the origins of human language, and how language relates to the real world. Foundations of Language makes important connections with other disciplines which have been isolated from linguistics for many years. It sets a new agenda for close cooperation between the study of language, mind, the brain, behaviour, and evolution.

There are few linguistic phenomena that have seduced linguists so skillfully as grammatical case has done. Ever since Panini (4th Century BC), case has claimed a central role in linguistic theory and continues to do so today. However, despite centuries worth of research, case has yet to reveal its most important secrets. This book offers breakthrough explanations for the understanding of case through agent-based experiments in cultural language evolution. The experiments demonstrate that case systems may emerge because they have a selective advantage for communication: they reduce the cognitive effort that listeners need for semantic interpretation, while at the same time limiting the cognitive resources required for doing so.