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The exploitation of the cultural heritage of countries rich in monuments and antiquities, but substantially vulnerable (for various reasons) when it comes to their preservation, is a phenomenon that has long preceded any attempt by international law at regulating and containing it. Following the massive destruction and looting of cultural objects occurred during WWI and WWII, however, international humanitarian law (with the 1954 Hague Convention and related Protocols, and then with the 1977 Additional Protocols to Geneva Conventions) was the first to take an active interest in setting shared international standards for the safeguarding and respect of cultural properties in the event of armed conflicts. Within this legal framework, however, criminal law still played a very marginal role in the fight against the widespread (and ever growing) phenomenon of cultural property transnational trafficking; a trend that basically continued throughout all the second half of the 20th century (with a few exceptions, chief amongst them the Council of Europe’s willingness to promote a European Convention on Offences relating to Cultural Property which, opened to signature in 1985, never entered into force for lack of the minimum number of ratifications). The 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, and the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, in fact, while aimed at combating an illegal trade whose international dimension was getting more and more apparent and alarming, basically focused on administrative and civil law issues of domestic protection, international cooperation, and return and restitution. At the turn of the millennium, however, something started to change. Within the framework of the United Nations, the UNODC started taking an active role in promoting international initiatives aimed at expanding transnational criminal law to enco

The exploitation of the cultural heritage of countries rich in monuments and antiquities, but substantially vulnerable (for various reasons) when it comes to their preservation, is a phenomenon that has long preceded any attempt by international law at regulating and containing it. Following the massive destruction and looting of cultural objects occurred during WWI and WWII, however, international humanitarian law (with the 1954 Hague Convention and related Protocols, and then with the 1977 Additional Protocols to Geneva Conventions) was the first to take an active interest in setting shared international standards for the safeguarding and respect of cultural properties in the event of armed conflicts. Within this legal framework, however, criminal law still played a very marginal role in the fight against the widespread (and ever growing) phenomenon of cultural property transnational trafficking; a trend that basically continued throughout all the second half of the 20th century (with a few exceptions, chief amongst them the Council of Europe’s willingness to promote a European Convention on Offences relating to Cultural Property which, opened to signature in 1985, never entered into force for lack of the minimum number of ratifications). The 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, and the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, in fact, while aimed at combating an illegal trade whose international dimension was getting more and more apparent and alarming, basically focused on administrative and civil law issues of domestic protection, international cooperation, and return and restitution. At the turn of the millennium, however, something started to change. Within the framework of the United Nations, the UNODC started taking an active role in promoting international initiatives aimed at expanding transnational criminal law to enco

Scientific approaches to art forgery provide the rigorous methodology by which claims made about a work can be tested. A plethora of scientific instrumentation is available for the analysis of artwork but data are only useful when assessed against existing secure points of identification. Verifiability of results, therefore, relies on standardised documentation, defined rules of evidence and ensuring that all processes and findings are reproducible. In building knowledge of what characteristics constitute authentic works, providing effective protocols and rigorous procedures and bringing together multi-disciplinary knowledge to bear on questions of art forgery, science has become an essential part of good curatorial practice, effective conservation procedure and art market diligence.

Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2016 (Boston, USA, 31 May - 3 June 2016), Contains fulltext : 159256.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), In Korean, focus is expressed in accentual phrasing. To ascertain whether words focused in this manner enjoy a processing advantage analogous to that conferred by focus as expressed in, e.g, English and Dutch, we devised sentences with target words in one of four conditions: prosodic focus, syntactic focus, prosodic + syntactic focus, and no focus as a control. 32 native speakers of Korean listened to blocks of 10 sentences, then were presented visually with words and asked whether or not they had heard them. Overall, words with focus were recognised significantly faster and more accurately than unfocused words. In addition, words with syntactic focus or syntactic + prosodic focus were recognised faster than words with prosodic focus alone. As for other languages, Korean focus confers processing advantage on the words carrying it. While prosodic focus does provide an advantage, however, syntactic focus appears to provide the greater beneficial effect for recognition memory.

Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2016, 31 mei 2016, Contains fulltext : 159253.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), To examine the relative roles of language-specific and language-universal mechanisms in the production of prosodic focus, we compared production of five different types of focus by native speakers of English and Mandarin. Two comparable dialogues were constructed for each language, with the same words appearing in focused and unfocused position; 24 speakers recorded each dialogue in each language. Duration, F0 (mean, maximum, range), and rms-intensity (mean, maximum) of all critical word tokens were measured. Across the different types of focus, cross-language differences were observed in the degree to which English versus Mandarin speakers use the different prosodic parameters to mark focus, suggesting that while prosody may be universally available for expressing focus, the means of its employment may be considerably language-specific.

Securing the evidential link between the work and the artist who is purported to have produced it requires a rigorous analytical approach; one that not only accepts particular evidence that may support the assertion of authenticity, but which can also contest evidence that is not correct. Such an approach is by its very nature multidisciplinary, often bringing together knowledge of art history, the art market, cultural materials conservation, chemistry, law and policing. What constitutes evidence of authenticity is generally based on considerations of provenance, art historical context, including facts about the artist and scientific enquiry. Building the chain of evidence for art authentication is a complex and carefully constructed activity that ensures that works can be legitimately, and verifiably, linked to the artist who is purported to be their source.

A range of intonational devices can be used in the grammar of information and corrective focus marking in languages with relatively free word order. In this paper we explore whether nouns in the Australian Indigenous language Mawng are realised differently depending on syntactic function and focus. Results show that the pitch level associated with Subjects is higher in conditions of corrective focus compared to other utterance contexts and there is a strong correlation between focus and utterance position. Placing a word in a corrective focus context does not appear to have an effect on word duration in this corpus confirming that pitch register variation and intonational phrasing are the major prosodic cues associated with corrective focus in Mawng.

Analysis of map task data for two varieties of English in which uptalk has long been documented (Australian and New Zealand) indicates differences in the phonetic forms of uptalk rises and question rises. While the details of the phonetic differences are not the same in the two samples, the end result is a more dynamic rise in uptalk than in questions. This difference in rise shape may be indicative of a change-inprogress in the intonational systems of the two varieties.

This study investigates how native prosodic systems and second language (L2) learning experience shape non-native tone production. Speakers from tone language backgrounds (native Cantonese and Mandarin speakers [CS & MS]) and non-tone language backgrounds (English monolinguals [ES] and English speakers with Mandarin learning experience [EM]) produced the six Cantonese tones in an imitation task. The results suggest systematic effects of native prosodic systems on L2 tone production, regardless of tone or non-tone language backgrounds. MS have more problems with pitch height whereas ES tend to produce every tone in a level shape, which echoes the findings from previous perception studies. Further, MS’s ability to integrate their native sensitivity to pitch height, along with their Mandarin training in pitch contour, contributes to their exceptional performance in producing the new tone language. Importantly, EM speakers performed better than MS speakers, suggesting that L1 experience with tone may be less helpful to learners than L2 tone acquisition experience, even when this L2 experience is with a different tone language (here Mandarin).

In Lindblom's Hyper- and Hypo-articulation (H & H) theory, speech varies between clear and less clear depending on the communicative context. Hyperarticulation is known to reflect prosodic boundary information and prosodic prominence or focus. The realisation of hyperarticulation appears to differ between languages. In this study of three Australian languages, it is asked whether, in pre-boundary position in short prosodic phrases, vowel lengthening tends to co-occur with acoustic evidence of hyperarticulation. Further, it is asked whether hyperarticulation is stronger in the pre-boundary syllable than in the post-boundary one. It is demonstrated that pre-boundary lengthening in short intonational phrases in Australian languages tends to co-occur with an increase in vowel peripherality.

Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2016 (Boston, USA, 31 May - 3 June 2016), Contains fulltext : 159256.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), In Korean, focus is expressed in accentual phrasing. To ascertain whether words focused in this manner enjoy a processing advantage analogous to that conferred by focus as expressed in, e.g, English and Dutch, we devised sentences with target words in one of four conditions: prosodic focus, syntactic focus, prosodic + syntactic focus, and no focus as a control. 32 native speakers of Korean listened to blocks of 10 sentences, then were presented visually with words and asked whether or not they had heard them. Overall, words with focus were recognised significantly faster and more accurately than unfocused words. In addition, words with syntactic focus or syntactic + prosodic focus were recognised faster than words with prosodic focus alone. As for other languages, Korean focus confers processing advantage on the words carrying it. While prosodic focus does provide an advantage, however, syntactic focus appears to provide the greater beneficial effect for recognition memory.

Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2016, 31 mei 2016, Contains fulltext : 159253.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access), To examine the relative roles of language-specific and language-universal mechanisms in the production of prosodic focus, we compared production of five different types of focus by native speakers of English and Mandarin. Two comparable dialogues were constructed for each language, with the same words appearing in focused and unfocused position; 24 speakers recorded each dialogue in each language. Duration, F0 (mean, maximum, range), and rms-intensity (mean, maximum) of all critical word tokens were measured. Across the different types of focus, cross-language differences were observed in the degree to which English versus Mandarin speakers use the different prosodic parameters to mark focus, suggesting that while prosody may be universally available for expressing focus, the means of its employment may be considerably language-specific.

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Item does not contain fulltext, An analysis of corrected speech errors from a taped corpus addressed the difficult case of errors ambiguous between a phonetic and a lexical source (e.g. "Keep Tar -- Car Talk on the air", which could be an anticipation of /t/ or a word substitution). Peak F0 of the error and of the correction were measured (e.g. of "Tar" and "Car" in the example), and the difference between the two measures calculated. The results showed that, as in previous studies, word errors are more likely than sound errors to differ in error and correction prosody. In their correction prosody, the ambiguous errors strongly resembled sound errors and not word errors. We propose that ambiguous errors are sound errors which by chance have produced a word. It has sometimes been argued that such errors provide evidence of leakage between levels of processing in speech production; this claim is however not motivated.

Item does not contain fulltext, An analysis of corrected speech errors from a taped corpus addressed the difficult case of errors ambiguous between a phonetic and a lexical source (e.g. "Keep Tar -- Car Talk on the air", which could be an anticipation of /t/ or a word substitution). Peak F0 of the error and of the correction were measured (e.g. of "Tar" and "Car" in the example), and the difference between the two measures calculated. The results showed that, as in previous studies, word errors are more likely than sound errors to differ in error and correction prosody. In their correction prosody, the ambiguous errors strongly resembled sound errors and not word errors. We propose that ambiguous errors are sound errors which by chance have produced a word. It has sometimes been argued that such errors provide evidence of leakage between levels of processing in speech production; this claim is however not motivated.