George N. Clements

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George N. Clements (born October 5, 1940, in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA), is a linguist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S.), Paris, France. He was educated in New Haven, Paris and London, and received his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 1973. He was a visiting scientist at M.I.T. (1973-1975) and professor at Harvard (1975-1982) and Cornell (1982-1991) before moving to Paris in 1992, where lives with his wife and their two children.

Nick Clements is a specialist in phonology with a long-term interest in African languages. He is best known for his contributions to the areas of CV phonology, feature geometry, and sonority theory which helped establish the modern theory of speech sounds and syllable structure. His first-hand studies of the linguistic and phonetic structures of African languages have contributed to advances in the study of phonological theory and linguistic typology. His current work is concerned with the principles underlying speech sound inventories across languages.