Language bioprogram theory

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Main article: Creole language

The Language bioprogram theory or Language bioprogram hypothesis (LBH) is a theory arguing that the similarities between different creole languages cannot be solely attributed to their superstrate and substrate languages. As articulated mostly by Derek Bickerton,^[1] creolization occurs when the linguistic exposure of children in a community consists solely of a highly unstructured pidgin; these children use their innate language capacity to transform the pidgin, which characteristically has high syntactic variability^[2] into a language with a highly structured grammar. As this capacity is universal, the grammars of these new languages have many similarities.

Contents 1 Bickerton 2 Creole Prototype 3 References 4 Bibliography

[edit] Bickerton

By comparing Hawaiian Pidgin and Creole, Bickerton identified twelve features which he believed to be integral to any creole.^{[citation needed]} Having analyzed these features, he believed that he was able to characterize, at least partly, the properties of innate grammar.^[3] Although this hypothesis has enjoyed much popularity, it has ultimately been criticized.^[who?] First of all, Bickerton in his LBH, defined very precisely what he considers to be a creole: a language that has arisen out of a prior pidgin that had not existed for more than a generation and among a population where, at most, 20% were speakers of the dominant language and where the remaining 80% were linguistically diverse.^{[citation needed]} Such a definition excludes many languages that might be called creoles.^{[citation needed]} Moreover, lack of historical data makes it often impossible to evaluate such claims.^{[citation needed]} In addition, many of the creole languages that fit this definition do not display all the twelve features,^{[citation needed]} while, according to Muhlhausler (1986), the left-out creoles often display more of them. Another problem, raised by Mufwene (1986), is that if the same bioprogram was the starting point of all creoles, one must explain the differences between them, and language diversity in general, as the bioprogram is universal.

On the other hand, Bickerton, puts emphasis on children's contribution to the development of a creole and the abrupt character of this process. For example, in Bickerton (1983), he exhibits ungrammatical utterances made by English-speaking children between the ages of two and four, and argues that they are very similar to perfectly grammatical sentences of English-based creole languages:

Child	Creole
Where I can put it?	Where I can put om?	Hawaii
Daddy throw the nother rock	Daddy t'row one neda rock'tone	Jamaica
I go full Angela bucket	I go full Angela bucket	Guyana
Lookit a boy play ball	Luku one boy a play ball	Jamaica
Nobody don't like me	Nobody no like me	Guyana
I no like do that	I no like do that	Hawaii
Johnny big more than me	Johnny big more than me	Jamaica
Let Daddy get pen write it	Make Daddy get pen write am	Guyana
I more better than Johnny	I more better than Johnny	Hawaii

Over time, the grammar behind such utterances are altered when parents continue to model a grammar different from this innate one. Presumably, if such children were removed from exposure to English parents, their grammars would continue to be that of creole languages.^[4]

Thomason & Kaufman (1988) argue that this emphasis on child-input implies two different linguistic communities but that it is far simpler and more consistent with the data from multilingual communities to assume that the two groups form one speech community, and that both make a contributions to the development of the emergent creole. Also, Singler (1986) points out that children were scarce on plantations, where creoles appeared, for several reasons such as: absence of women, high rates of sterility, miscarriage, and infant mortality.

However, according to Muhlhasusler (1986), the differences between the speech of children and adults in Tok Pisin are so big that communication is drastically hindered.

[edit] Creole Prototype

McWhorter contributed to the LBH with his Creole Prototype Theory, which argues that creoles exhibit some features that may be used to distinguish them from other languages without referring to the socio-historical dimension. According to McWhorter (1992), creoles as opposed to other languages do not:

1. use grammatical inflection via affixing
2. develop productive, nontransparent derivational affixes
3. use tone to either mark lexical differences or as grammatical markers

These features do not appear in creoles because creoles are relatively young languages, but they may appear later on in their grammars as the languages change. He does not claim that all creoles are ideal examples of the prototype, rather they exhibit varying degrees of conformity with the prototype.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Bickerton, Derek (1981), Roots of Language, Karoma Publishers, ISBN 0-89720-044-6
• Bickerton, Derek (1983), "Creole Languages", Scientific American 249 (8): 116-122
• Bickerton, Derek (1984), "The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis", The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7
• Bickerton, Derek (1988), "Creole languages and the bioprogram", written at Cambridge, in Newmeyer, F.J., Linguistics: The Cambridge survey, vol. 2, Cambridge University Press
• Bickerton, Derek (1991), "On the Supposed 'Gradualness' of Creole Development", Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 6
• Hall, Robert (1966). Pidgin and Creole languages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• McWhorter, John H. (1992), "Substratal influence in Saramaccan serial verb construction.", Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 4
• Mufwene, Salikoko (1986), "The Universalist and Substrate Hypotheses Complement One Another", written at Amsterdam, in Muysken, Pieter, Substrata versus universals in creole gensis, Benjamins
• Muhlhausler, P. (1986), written at Oxford, Pidgin and Creole linguistics, Blackwell Publishing
• Thomason, Sarah & Terrence Kaufman (1988), written at Berkely, Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics (first ed.), University of California Press
• Singler, J.V. (1986), "Short Note", Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages'' 1