Of all prosodic variables used to classify languages, rhythm has proved most problematic. Recent attempts to classify languages based on the relative proportion of vowels or obstruents have had some success, but these seem only indirectly related to perceived rhythm. Coupling between nested prosodic units is identified as an additional source of rhythmic patterning in speech, and this coupling ...

According to Genesis, trees were created on the third day of the Creation Week. Within a Biblical worldview, this suggests that they are discontinuous with other plant forms. Naturalists posit that trees arose by random processes from simpler photosynthetic organisms. Fossil evidence for tree evolution from putative non-tree precursors is evaluated. It is concluded that the fossil record does n...

The species problem is the persistent species. biological and philosophical debate on the meaning of the word "species" and the methods of species identification. With a meaning of "species" that follows from a simple model of DNA replication, species are shown to be real and non-arbitrary groups of organisms, under some circumstances. However, it also follows that many organisms do not belong ...