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3 results

The Evolution, Acquisition and Development of Syntax
  • Insights from Creole Languages and Beyond
  • Edited by Dany Adone, Astrid Gabel
  • Published online:
    19 February 2025
    Print publication:
    06 February 2025
  • Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of scholars, this book explores three interconnected aspects of syntax - its origins and evolution, its acquisition by children, and its role in languages' ongoing development and change. These three distinct areas were linked through Bickerton's most provocative work 'Language Bioprogram Hypothesis' (LBH). This book highlights the discussions on syntax that have emerged over the years as a result of the LBH model. Each chapter include a discussion of Bickerton's work, and a special focus is placed on Creole languages, which provide unique case studies for the study of the evolution, acquisition and development of languages. The book also discusses the relevance of LBH for other natural languages, including sign languages. Shedding light on the relevance of syntax in language, it is essential reading for researchers and students in a wide range of linguistic disciplines.

  • 3 - Pidgins and Creoles

  • Robert McColl Millar, University of Aberdeen
  • Book:
    Linguistic Contact and Language Change
    Published online:
    22 December 2024
    Print publication:
    05 December 2024, pp 55-105

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses and exemplifies the nature and devlopment of pidgins and creoles. Placed in social and historical context, a range of varieties, contemporary and historical, are discussed. Competing theories on the development of these varieties -- as well as whether they are closely connected to each other -- are addressed. Bickerton’s idea of the language bioprogram hypothesis is critiqued, while the most potent and popular contemporary views on how creoles developed -- creole exceptionalism and uniformitarianism -- are compared and analysed. The case study considers the linguistic history and present nature of the creoles of Suriname, with particular emphasis on Sranan.

  • 22 - Language and the media

  • from Part V - Applied sociolinguistics
  • Edited by Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    06 October 2011, pp 396-412

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the terms 'pidgin' and 'creole' and the complications that arise from efforts to arrive at precise definitions of them, specifically with regard to determining which speech varieties are pidgins and creoles. Languages whose name contains Pidgin or a variant thereof are regionally restricted to the Pacific and to West Africa, and have English as the source of their lexicon. Languages that are called 'Creole' by their speakers are spoken on both sides of the Atlantic and include English-lexified Creolese in Guyana and Krio in Sierra Leone. Loreto Todd recognized that the term pidgin was variably used to designate makeshift contact varieties as well as fully stabilized languages. The most widely studied cases of pidgins and creoles all emerged from contact situations resulting from European colonial expansion. DeCamp proposed the creole continuum model, and Bickerton and Rickford refined and expanded upon it.