George Nickerson Clements (October 5, 1940 – August 30, 2009) was an American theoretical linguist specializing in

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

Career

Clements was born in

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wi ...

, and educated in

New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,023 ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

and

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. He received his Ph.D. from the

School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury a ...

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

, in 1973, defending a thesis on the

Ewe language Ewe (''Eʋe'' or ''Eʋegbe'' ) is a language spoken by approximately 20 million people in West Africa, mainly in Ghana, Togo and Benin, and also in some other countries like Liberia and southwestern Nigeria. Ewe is part of a cluster of rel ...

based on a year of field work in

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...

. He was a visiting scientist at

M.I.T. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

(1973–75) and held appointments as professor at Harvard (1975–82) and

Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach a ...

(1982–91) before moving to the

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,63 ...

(C.N.R.S.) in Paris in 1992. Clements' main research was in

with a special focus on

African languages The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families: * Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Souther ...

. He is best known for his research in syllable theory, tone and feature theory which have contributed to the modern theory of sound patterning in spoken language. At the time of his death, his work was concerned with the principles underlying speech sound inventories across languages (Clements & Ridouane 2011).

Personal

He was married to French linguist, Annie Rialland. He died of

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

in Chatham, Massachusetts, at the age of 68.Elizabeth Hume, 2009-08-31
Obituary on LINGUIST list
Retrieved 2009-10-01.

Books

* Clements, G. N. & S. J. Keyser, 1983. ''CV Phonology: a Generative Theory of the Syllable'' (Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 9), MIT Press, Cambridge, Ma. * Halle, Morris & G. N. Clements, 1983. ''Problem Book in Phonology''. Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press and Bradford Books. * Clements, G. N. & J. Goldsmith, eds., 1984. ''Autosegmental Studies in Bantu Tone''. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter * Clements, G. N. & R. Ridouane, eds., 2011. ''Where do phonological features come from? Cognitive, physical and developmental bases of distinctive speech categories''. John Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam.

Other selected publications

* Clements, G. N., 1985. "The Geometry of Phonological Features," ''Phonology Yearbook'' 2, 225-252 * Clements, G. N., 1990. "The Role of the Sonority Cycle in Core Syllabification." In John Kingston & M. Beckman, eds., ''Papers in Laboratory Phonology I'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 283–333 * Clements, G. N. & Elizabeth Hume, 1995. "The Internal Organization of Speech Sounds" In John Goldsmith, ed., ''Handbook of Phonological Theory''. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 245–306 * Clements, G. N., 2003. "Feature Economy in Sound Systems", ''Phonology'' 20.3, pp. 287–333 * Clements, G. N. & Annie Rialland, 2008. "Africa as a phonological area". In Bernd Heine & Derek Nurse, eds, ''A Linguistic Geography of Africa''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 36–85.

References

External links

Nick Clements's personal webpage

{{DEFAULTSORT:Clements, Nick 1940 births 2009 deaths Linguists from the United States Harvard University faculty Cornell University faculty Phonologists 20th-century linguists