Do we need a symbol for a central open vowel? The discussion so far and a reply to Daniel Recasens and Martin Ball

In the weeks following the publication, of our article ‘Do we need a symbol for a central open vowel?’ (Barry & Trouvain 2008), we received 12 personal communications commenting on and discussing the points we had made. Martin Ball has since published his discussion points in JIPA (Ball 2009), as has Daniel Recasens (Recasens 2009), who was not among the 12 who contacted us directly. Thus it would be fitting for us to summarize the points made by the 11 members whose opinions have not yet been made known to the rest of the IPA community and to refine our standpoint in the light of Recasens’ and Ball's comments.