Abstract
The attraction of looking at Pidgin and Creole languages to gain understanding about the origin of human language and weighty matters such as the nature - nurture debate is derived from the view that many Creolists subscribe to: That ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis. This view combined with the Cartesian view that there must be a general or universal grammar underlying the grammatical features of all languages is articulated, for instance, in Bickerton's Roots of Language (1981) where it is suggested that the examination of the grammar developed among fust generation Creole speakers with no exposure to a coherent model leads to the discovery of a set of so-called bio-program features of human language.
Highlights
The attraction of looking at Pidgin and Creole languages to gain understanding about the origin of human language and weighty matters such as the nature - nurture debate is derived from the view that many Creolists subscribe to: That ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis
The fruitfulness of Bickerton's approach is contingent on a number of factors, including the correctness of the ontogenesis - phylogenesis hypothesis and the universal deep structure assumption as well as the availability of empirical data from an uncontaminated 'desert island' situation of glossogenesis
Pitcairn Island English with its offshoot on Norfolk Island is of extraordinary interest because it offers as near a laboratory case of Creole dialect formation as we are ever likely to have
Summary
The attraction of looking at Pidgin and Creole languages to gain understanding about the origin of human language and weighty matters such as the nature - nurture debate is derived from the view that many Creolists subscribe to: That ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis. This view combined with the Cartesian view that there must be a general or universal grammar underlying the grammatical features of all languages is articulated, for instance, in Bickerton's Roots ofLanguage (1981) where it is suggested that the examination of the grammar developed among fust generation Creole speakers with no exposure to a coherent model leads to the discovery of a set of so-called bio-program features of human language.
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