14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14)

San Francisco, CA, USA
August 1-7, 1999

So Where Should the 4th ICPhS Take Place? And Why did it Never Occur?

Jean-François Bonnot (1), Louis-Jean Boë (2)

(1) Départ. de Linguistique Générale, Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg, France
(2) ICP - Université Stendhal/INPG, Grenoble, France

Dedicated to the memory of Louise Kaiser.

At the end of the 3rd ICPhS, which was organized in 1938 in Ghent (Belgium), the Permanent International Council had to choose a president and the location for the following congress. The Second World War did not allow the planned programme to take place. Twenty-three years, in fact, separated the 3rd ICPhS from the 4th, held in Helsinki, which did not occur until 1961. The cataclysm provoked by the war does not by itself explain such a long interruption between the 3rd and 4th congresses. Several explanations may be put forward: Between 1938 and the period after the war, most of the members of the Permanent Council retired or died; The phonetic sciences underwent significant changes, both in the problems addressed, methodologies adopted, and experimental methods employed (due to the development of electronics and the emergence of information technology), while at the same time expanding their domain of influence.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Bonnot, Jean-François / Boë, Louis-Jean (1999): "So where should the 4th ICPhs take place? and why did it never occur?", In ICPhS-14, 1325-1328.