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

theoretical linguist Theoretical linguistics is a term in linguistics which, like the related term general linguistics, can be understood in different ways. Both can be taken as a reference to theory of language, or the branch of linguistics which inquires into the ...

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 lin ...

, 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 and 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), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...

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 are ...

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 degre ...

, 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 rela ...

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 Ghana–Ivory Coast border, the west, Burkina ...

. He was a visiting scientist at M.I.T. (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 teac ...

(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 31,637 ...

(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 Southern ...

. 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 bl ...

Chatham, Massachusetts Chatham () is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. Chatham is located at the southeast tip of Cape Cod and has historically been a fishing community. First settled by the English in 1664, the township was originally called M ...

, 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