Character viewer not appearing in Input Menu

Hello -

I have OX 10.11.1 installed on a MacPro. Until today, the character viewer (now named emoji and special) appeared as I selected in keyboard system preferences in the menu bar. Now, I cannot select character viewer from the menu bar since it is no longer listed - there is either a blank spot in the menu bar where the character viewer icon used to be, or just the US keyboard icon - selecting the menu bar icon either just shows the US keyboard choice, or "show (null)" where "emoji & symbol" and "keyboard" used to be.

I can still open the the character viewer from within apps via the Edit menu. And, I've tried numerous times to reselect the option to show the character viewer from within the Keyboard system preferences - each time I select it, it unselects itself when I move out of preferences.

I've tried deleting some of the preference files I found pertaining to keyboard/character - ran disk repair utilities/permissions with no problems.

Any thoughts??? Thanks -