Pike, Kenneth L. (1912–2000)

Emily A. Denning

Dr. Kenneth Lee Pike was born in Woodstock, CT, in 1912. He earned his B.A. in theology from Gordon College in 1933. After being denied missionary work in China, he joined the Summer Institute of Languages to study Amerindian languages in Mexico in 1935. There he learned to speak Mixtec directly from Mixtec speakers without the aid of an interpreter. In 1937, Pike began his doctoral study of linguistics at the University of Michigan where he studied under Edward Sapir in the Boasian cultural relativism tradition. While engaging in his doctoral research, Pike, and his wife Evelyn, lived among the Mixtec. Together they developed an alphabet for the purpose of translating Mixtec language into literary forms. In 1942, Pike earned a Ph.D. in linguistics and became president of the Summer Institute of Languages. He published the Mixtec New Testament Bible in 1951. Pike divided his time between the Summer Institute ...

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