The language bioprogram theory or language bioprogram hypothesis (LBH) is a theory arguing that the structural similarities between different
creole language
A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...
s cannot be solely attributed to their
superstrate and
substrate languages. As articulated mostly by
Derek Bickerton
Derek Bickerton (March 25, 1926 – March 5, 2018) was an English-born linguist and professor at the University of Hawaii in Manoa. Based on his work in creole languages in Guyana and Hawaii, he has proposed that the features of creole languages ...
,
creolization
Creolization is the process through which creole languages and cultures emerge. Creolization was first used by linguists to explain how contact languages become creole languages, but now scholars in other social sciences use the term to describe ne ...
occurs when the linguistic exposure of children in a community consists solely of a highly unstructured
pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...
; these children use their innate language capacity to transform the pidgin, which characteristically has high syntactic variability, into a language with a highly structured grammar. As this capacity is universal, the grammars of these new languages have many similarities.
Syntactic similarities
By comparing
Hawaiian Creole
Hawaiian Pidgin (alternately, Hawaiʻi Creole English or HCE, known locally as Pidgin) is an English-based creole language spoken in Hawaiʻi. An estimated 600,000 residents of Hawaii speak Hawaiian Pidgin natively and 400,000 speak it as a seco ...
,
Haitian Creole
Haitian Creole (; ht, kreyòl ayisyen, links=no, ; french: créole haïtien, links=no, ), commonly referred to as simply ''Creole'', or ''Kreyòl'' in the Creole language, is a French-based creole language spoken by 10–12million people wor ...
and
Sranan, Bickerton identified twelve features which he believed to be integral to any creole:
*Sentence structure:
subject–verb–object word order, with similar mechanisms for using word order to apply
focus
Focus, or its plural form foci may refer to:
Arts
* Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in South Australia Film
*''Focus'', a 1962 TV film starring James Whitmore
* ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based ...
to one of these constituents.
*Articles:
definite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ar ...
applied to specific and identified noun phrase,
indefinite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ar ...
applied to specific and newly asserted noun phrase, and zero for nonspecific noun phrase.
*TMA (
tense–modality–aspect) systems
*distinction of realized and unrealized complements
*relativization and subject-copying
*negation
*existential and possessive
*
copula
*adjectives as verbs
*questions
*question words
*passive equivalents
Having analyzed these features, he believed that he was able to characterize, at least partly, the properties of innate grammar.
In his LBH, Bickerton 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.
Bickerton puts emphasis on children's contribution to the development of a creole and the abrupt character of this process. For example, in , 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
An English-based creole language (often shortened to English creole) is a creole language for which English was the '' lexifier'', meaning that at the time of its formation the vocabulary of English served as the basis for the majority of the cre ...
:
Normally, the grammar behind such utterances made by children is eventually altered as 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.
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 contributions to the development of the emergent creole. Also, points out that children were scarce on plantations, where creoles appeared, for several reasons, including absence of women as well as high rates of sterility, miscarriage, and infant mortality.
However, according to , the differences between the speech of children and adults in
Tok Pisin
Tok Pisin (,Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh ; Tok Pisin ), often referred to by English speakers as "New Guinea Pidgin" or simply Pidgin, is a creole language spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an ...
are so big that communication is drastically hindered.
Verbal system
The verb
conjugation
Conjugation or conjugate may refer to:
Linguistics
* Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form
* Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language
Mathematics
* Complex conjugation, the chang ...
is typically close to an ideal tense–modality–aspect pattern. In this system, the absence or presence of auxiliary
verb
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
s indicate tense (concurrent or anterior), modality (realis or irrealis) and aspect (punctual or progressive), and when present these auxiliaries occur in that order, and typically are based on similar meaning words in the pidgin or superstrate language. Thus anterior tense may be marked by words such as ''bin'' in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
-based creoles (from ''been''), or ''té'' in French-based creoles (from ''été''), a future or subjunctive tense may be marked by ''go'' (from English ''go'') or ''al'' (from French ''aller''), and a non-punctual (non-stative) aspect by a word such as ''stei'' (from English ''stay'').
The above table demonstrates syntactic similarities of creole languages. Stative verbs are those that cannot form the
nonpunctual aspect. According to Bickerton, all observed creole languages strictly follow a structure that has the anterior particle precede the irreal particle, and the irreal particle precede the nonpunctual particle, although in certain languages some compounded forms may be replaced by other constructions.
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 , creoles are much less likely than other languages:
#to use grammatical inflection via affixing,
#to develop productive, nontransparent derivational affixes, or
#to 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.
Proposed empirical study
Bickerton proposed in 1976 an empirical test of his theory, which involved putting families speaking mutually unintelligible languages on a previously uninhabited island for three years. Federal funding for the test was obtained, but the experiment was cancelled over concerns that
informed consent
Informed consent is a principle in medical ethics and medical law, that a patient must have sufficient information and understanding before making decisions about their medical care. Pertinent information may include risks and benefits of treatme ...
could not be obtained, given the breadth of unknown possible hazards of participation.
A linguistic island experiment.
The World, Public Radio International, 24 April 2009.
Criticism
Several aspects of the LBH have attracted criticism. disputes some of Bickerton's claims about Hawai'i Creole, claiming that the linguistic input of the children was not impoverished, since it came from an expanded pidgin, not a rudimentary one. Siegel also claims the features of Hawai'i Creole are not that similar to other creoles and that the substrate languages (especially Cantonese
Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
and Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
) were a significant source of grammatical features. Siegel also makes the point that Hawai'i Creole emerged over two generations, not one.
Bickerton's definition excludes many languages that might be called creoles. Moreover, lack of historical data makes it often impossible to evaluate such claims. In addition, many of the creole languages that fit this definition do not display all the twelve features, while, according to , the left-out creoles often display more of them. Another problem, raised by , 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.
See also
*Monogenetic theory of pidgins
According to the theory of monogenesis in its most radical form, all pidgins and creole languages of the world can be ultimately traced back to one linguistic variety. This idea was first formulated by Hugo Schuchardt in the late 19th century and p ...
* Origin of language
* Origin of speech
* Innateness hypothesis
References
Bibliography
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Pidgins and creoles
Language acquisition
Bioprogram theory