ABSTRACT
Kenneth Lee Pike's weighty volume Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behaviour documents his 'ambitious' 'attempt' to 'revise the conceptual framework of language study' and to foster 'extensive deep-seated changes in language theory'. Pike's 'total work arose from a struggle to describe empirical data in the absence of 'a satisfactory basis' in 'the current literature'. Pike's 'tagmemic' approach differed from mainstream American linguistics in many ways, but most of all in its sheer elaboration and complexity. Pike's own methods stemmed from using a 'monolingual approach': working 'without written or translated documents and without an interpreter', and relying heavily on 'gesture'. Pike judges his 'behaviouremic theory elegant and fruitful' because it 'describes' the 'enormous complexity of interlocking systems, levels, and units' in terms of 'a few simple components', rather than seeking 'simplicity' 'by a rigid separation of levels'. Pike devotes his most massive efforts to describing 'the phonological hierarchy' in terms of movement.
