In June 2011, the IPA Council received a formal request from William Barry and Juergen Trouvain to vote on the adoption of a standard IPA symbol for the central open (unrounded) vowel. This request followed publication in 2008, in JIPA 38(2), of their paper 'Do we need a symbol for a central open vowel?', along with response papers in JIPA 39(2) by Daniel Recasens and Martin Ball, and a further response from Barry and Trouvain, in JIPA 39(3).

The Council debated the issue by e-mail in 2011 and took a vote in June-July 2011. That vote was positive but not conclusive: with only 15 of 30 members voting, the vote was 8 in favor, 7 against. The Executive then decided to bring the issue again to the new Council that would begin its term in August, in hopes of a more decisive vote. Thus in Fall 2011 discussion was re-opened, and after extensive discussion the following resolution, deemed most likely of all the options that had been discussed to be supported, was put to the Council for a vote in December 2011:

I agree with the adoption of [A] (small-cap A) as the IPA symbol for the central open vowel, to be placed on the IPA chart under 'Other symbols'.

With all 30 members of the Council voting this time, the resolution was defeated: 17 no, 12 yes, 1 abstention. The IPA will therefore not be adding a symbol for this vowel to the alphabet or chart. No further resolutions were proposed to follow up on this issue at this time.

The Permanent Council for the Organisation of ICPhS received three proposals from
Paris, Scotland and Stockholm for the organisation of the 18th ICPhS. The members of the
Permanent Council voted in favour of the proposal by the Scottish consortium. The 18th
ICPhS will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2015 organised by scholars from the Universities
of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Queen Margaret and Strathclyde.

At the Permanent Council Meeting held in Hong Kong, the reviewing process of the papers
submitted to ICPhS was discussed. PC members voted in favour of a single blind procedure
for the reviewing of papers submitted to forthcoming Congresses.

The 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences was held in Hong Kong, China from
17 August to 21 August 2011. It was jointly organized by the City University of Hong Kong,
the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, and the Academia Sinica, Taipei. In total,
579 papers were presented covering a wide variety of topics in phonetic sciences. These
included seven plenary sessions, eight special sessions where thirty papers were presented,
and 542 papers in regular sessions consisting of 311 oral presentations and 231 poster
presentations. In total, 682 delegates attended the Congress. Contributions came from 43
countries. 175 reviewers took part in the double-blind review of the congress papers. Two
satellite meetings were also held.

Ten travel scholarships for the amount of 300 Euros are made available by the Gösta Bruce Memorial Fund, to support student members to present their research at ICPhS2011. Click here for details.