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<TITLE>DIMACS Seminar on Math and CS in Biology</TITLE>
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<H1>DIMACS Seminar on Math and CS in Biology</H1>
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<H2>Title:</H2>
A computational method for inferring evolutionary trees and an application to Indo-European family of languages
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<H2>Speaker:</H2>
<DL>
<DD>Tandy Warnow
<DD>Department of Computer and Information Science
<DD>University of Pennsylvania
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<H2>Place:</H2>
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<DD>CoRE Building, Room 431
<DD>Busch Campus, Rutgers University
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<H2>Time:</H2>
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<DD>11:00 AM
<DD>Tuesday, February 20, 1996
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<H2>Abstract:</H2>
The determination of evolutionary trees is a major endeavor
within biology and historical linguistics, but current techniques that
are used to generate trees are limited either by computational
problems or through the use of methods which lose information present
in the primary data.
<P>
In this talk we will present a method for efficiently inferring
evolutionary trees in Historical Linguistics which avoid the
difficulties that have made this analysis intractable.
We use primary data, and show that an appropriate optimization
problem (based solidly upon traditional historical linguistic
methodology) can be solved exactly for these data.
<P>
We have applied this method to the problem of inferring the
evolutionary history for the Indo-European (IE) family of languages,
and have made several surprising and strikingly strongly supported
findings. We analyzed the IE data with particular interest in
determining whether our new methodology could lay to rest the debate
on two longstanding conjectures: the {\em Indo-Hittite hypothesis} and
the {\em Italo-Celtic hypothesis.}
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Our analysis indicates significant support for the Indo-Hittite
hypothesis and preliminary (albeit weak) support for the Italo-Celtic
hypothesis. It also proposes a reasonable explanation for the
surprising dual allegiance of Germanic. Most importantly, it provides
a firm methodology by which linguists can test the consistency of
their judgements, thus enabling further research into problematic
data.
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This is joint work with linguists Donald Ringe and Ann Taylor
of the University of Pennsylvania.
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Note: If you would like to meet with the speaker, please send mail
to Vineet Bafna at bafna@dimacs.rutgers.edu
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Document last modified on February 14, 1996
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