PHONEMICS A Technique for Reducing Languages to Writing by KENNETH L. PIKE ANN ARBOR University OF MICHIGAN PRESS .Copynght 1947 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Second Printing, 1949 Therd Printing, 1951 Fourth Printing, 1954 Fifth Printing, 1956 Lxhopnnted on USA EDWARDS BROTHERS, ING ANN ARBOR, MICHIGANFOREWORD In 1943, at the time of the publica- tion of Kenneth Lee Pike's Phonetics, two oth~ er books by him were announced as in prepara- tion. The pressure of a variety of special demands arising from the national war effort has delayed the completion of these books. Important for these demands was the contribu- tion Dr. Pike made to the materials for the teaching of English as a foreign language pro- duced by the English Language Institute of the University of Michigan. The basic re- search he carried forward as part of this pro- gram resulted in his book Intonation of Amer- ican English, published by the University of Michigan Press in 1945. In spite of heavy practical duties the work upon the two books announced tn 1943 went steadily forvard and they have developed and matured with the delay. Both books pro- vide necessary supplements to the earlier vol- ume, Phonetics, 1f one would grasp with some completeness the approach of modern linguis- tics to the study of vocal sounds, Tone : Languages, mow in press, deals with the na- ture of tonal systems and provides a technique for the analysis of significant tonal con- trasts. The new material here on two lan- guages never before reported provides, not e sampling, but a thoroughgoing dealing with all the pertinent evidence, ineluding an ex- tensive analysis of tone sandhi and tone fu- sion. . Phonemics is more directly the coun- terpart of Phonetics. In Phonetics the end sought was the establishing of a technique of description which could deal with the nature and formation of all sounds whether these sounds are used in language or not. Prac- tically it sought a means to describe sounds in terms of movements of the "vocal appara- tus," in terms of articulatory formulas, In Phonemics the end sought is the establishing of a satisfactory technique for discovering the pertinent units of sound in any language and organizing them for an alphabet writing. Much discussion has centered upon the nature of the "phoneme" and many have at~ tempted to define it - some as a “"psycholo-~ gical unit," others as a “class of sounds." Dr. Pike furnishes a very practical and scientifically sound approach by carefully stating the assumptions upon which he proceeds and then leading the reader step by step through the intricate problems involved in arriving at the phonemes of a language. Prac- tically, then, "a phoneme 1s one of the sig- nificant units of sound arrived at for a particular language by the analytical proce- dures developed from the basic premises,..." Phonemie analysis thus seeks to arrive, not simply at the phonetic character of the sepa- rate sound units, but at the structure of the sound system of a ianguage. Phonemic analysis is a fundamental step in the modern struc~ tural approach to linguistic study. This book has grown out of more than a decade of experience investigating, in the Yield, a great varlety of diverse languages. ‘The premises underlying the phonemic preced~ uyes here set forth rest upon that experience, They are assumptions concerning general char- acteristics of language; but the generalizing is based upon an unusually wide range of first- hana observation. In addition to these years of expsri- ence in various linguistic communities, Dr. Pike haa devoted part of each year to training other field workers to make structural anal~ yses of languages, The validity of his prem- 4ses and the usefulness of his procedures have been constantly put to the test of prac- tical application. This book, therefore, with its step by step approach and many spe~ cific illustrations, brings the materials of one of the tiost important divisions of modern linguistic study within the grasp of the read- er without special technical training. Charles C, Fries