Birdsong analysis using beta process hidden Markov model

We proposed a new scheme on automatic annotation and analysis for songs of Bengalese finches, that have variability in terms of syllable sequencing. The scheme annotates songs by using the beta process hidden Markov model, a Bayesian non-parametrics method. The annotation was confirmed to agree to the results by the manual annotation by an expert almost perfectly (0.81-1.00) for songs by three out of four Bengalese finches. Our scheme also analyzed the syntactic rules of the birdsongs and found that the difference of the variations in sequencing of four different birds was accounted for by the difference of tutors, giving a new insight to development of syntax.