Annie Rialland (editor) - Features in Phonology and Phonetics: Posthumous Writings by Nick Clements and Coauthors

ISBN 978-3-11-037824-5

e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-039998-1

e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-040010-6

ISSN 1861-4191

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Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutschen Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet http://dnb.dnb.de .

2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Typesetting: Frank Benno Junghanns, Berlin

www.degruyter.com

Annie Rialland, Rachid Ridouane and Harry van der Hulst (Eds.)

Phonology and Phonetics

Editor

Aditi Lahiri

Volume 21

It is one of the great sadnesses of my life that Nick Clements died before his time. It was one of the great privileges of my life to have known and worked with him. I wish I could somehow extend that privilege to all of you. This meager preface is the best I can do.

Nick was the gentlest of people. I can honestly say that, as someone who has been spared that quality, I never heard a harsh word from him, even when the topic of conversation was about critics of our joint work together. Where I might have wished a plague of boils, Nick gave attention and respect. Our joint work was the better for it, of course. That was Nicks way.

Nick was a very private person. So it was only after long swathes of time together that I learned how remarkably diverse he was. As a young man he was a classical music DJ with the occasional dip into sports casting. He told me that his job was to whip the play-by-play action into a froth of excitement from descriptions that came mechanically in over a ticker tape machine miles away from the actual ballpark. I wish I could have done that.

Once when Nick came back home to the United States for medical care, he entrusted a painting to me for safekeeping. It was a copy of a painting originally thought to have been by Giorgone. The copy was extraordinary, especially the drapery in the background.

The painting hung in my office for several months while Nick was operated on for the removal of a serious tumor. It remained there while he underwent a lengthy rehabilitation that left him walking with a cane he swore he would come to discard. He did.

As it turned out, the painting, originally attributed to Giorgone, has since been recognized as an early work of Titian. I think Nick was drawn to it, even though he didnt know at the time that it was a Titian, because his eye told him it was superb. He had tremendous taste as a student of art and subsequently as a scientist.

Nick gave up art for linguistics. Lucky for the one; perhaps not so for the other. He became a consummate linguist. His work was a model of insight, creativity, sophistication, judiciousness and care. This will be apparent to everyone who reads this collection. If his articles were objects, Faberge eggs come to mind.

If I had to find a single word to describe the early Nick, the Nick with whom I wrote CV Phonology, that word would be unflappable. When Nick moved to Paris, married Annie Rialland and had two children, William and Clia, he added serenity to that description. It was an unbeatable combination. It stood him in great stead during the ultimate crisis of his life. In the end he kept friends at bay. He wanted to spare them.

Nick was clearly at his happiest in Paris with Annie, William, Clia and his colleagues at the Laboratory for Phonetics and Phonology with whom he worked for over sixteen years while he served as Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). Some of his most fruitful scholarship was done during this period. His inquiry into the origin of phonological features began in earnest here. He has planted the seeds. His colleagues will tend the harvest.

After Nick died his son, William, sent me a photograph that he had taken of Nick in a Parisian nightclub. It was of his father playing piano in a small ensemble. A jazz musician myself, I had no idea that Nick played the piano. It was one more layer pealed away.

The photograph left me with a smile and a question. If only Nick had lived, how many more layers would there have been? How much greater would be our loss?

Samuel Jay Keyser

Cambridge, MA

April 13, 2013

(19402009)

For a complete CV, see Nicks personal website http://nickclements.free.fr/

Contributors

Anglique Amelot

Laboratoire de Phontique et Phonologie, UMR 7018 (CNRS/Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Jean-Marc Beltzung

Laboratoire de linguistique de Nantes (LLING), EA 3827, Universit de Nantes

George N. Clements

Laboratoire de Phontique et Phonologie, UMR 7018 (CNRS/Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Rajesh Khatiwada

Laboratoire de Phontique et Phonologie, UMR 7018 (CNRS/Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Hyunsoom Kim

Department of English, Hongik University, Sangsoo-dong 72-1, Mapo-gu, Seoul 121-791, Republic of Korea

Julie Montagu

Laboratoire de Phontique et Phonologie, UMR 7018 (CNRS/Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Cdric Patin

Savoirs, Textes, Langage, UMR 8163, (CNRS/Universit Lille 3)

Annie Rialland

Laboratoire de Phontique et Phonologie, UMR 7018 (CNRS/Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Rachid Ridouane

Laboratoire de Phontique et Phonologie, UMR 7018 (CNRS/Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Martine Toda

Laboratoire de Phontique et Phonologie, UMR 7018 (CNRS/Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Jacqueline Vaissire

Laboratoire de Phontique et Phonologie, UMR 7018 (CNRS/Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Harry van der Hulst

Department of Linguistics, University of Connecticut

Chakir Zeroual

Facult Polydisciplinaire de Taza, Taza-Morocco, and Laboratoire de Phontique et Phonologie,

UMR 7018 (CNRS/Sorbonne Nouvelle)