Wheels within wheels

The two main theories on the rise and development of pidgin and especially creole languages are presented by their main Derek Bickerton for the nature hypothesis, i.e. the triggering of the bioprogramme of universals, and Peter Mühlhäusler for the nurture hypothesis, i.e. the social needs experienced by the speakers of a newly developing variety. Most of the other papers discuss the data on pidgins and creoles in the light of either of the two conflicting hypotheses. These data are related to a variety of languages such as Black English in South Carolina (USA); Negro-Dutch in St. Thomas Island; a French-based pidgin in Burundi; Khoi-Khoi Dutch, Malay Afrikaans and Afrikaans as a creolised and partly decreolised standard in South Africa; the Mexican-Indian language Cora and British Jamaican English. These data reveal that the traditional pidgin-creole dichotomy must be widened into a much more complex continuum, comprising not only a pidgin and creole phase, but also a post-creole phase, and a near-standard or new standard phase and that it must account for intricate processes of massive borrowing.