Pike, Kenneth L

Pike, Kenneth L(ee)

(born June 9, 1912, Woodstock, Conn., U.S.—died Dec. 31, 2000, Dallas, Tex.) U.S. linguist and anthropologist. Pike was associated throughout his career with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL International), an organization dedicated to linguistic study of little-known, unwritten languages, as an ancillary to Bible translation. He originated the linguistic theory known as tagmemics. The tagmeme, a unit comprising a function (e.g., a subject) and a class of items fulfilling that function (e.g., nouns), is identified by semantic as well as syntactic function.