Derek Bickerton

The language bioprogram hypothesis

It is hypothesized that creole languages are largely invented by children and show fundamental similarities, which derive from a biological program for language. The structures of Hawaiian Pidgin and Hawaiian Creole are contrasted, and evidence is provided to show that the latter derived from the former in a single generation. A realistic model of the processes of Creole formation shows how several specific historical and demographic factors interacted to restrict, in varying degrees, the access of pidgin speakers to the dominant language, and hence the nature of input to the children of those speakers. It is shown that the resulting similarities of Creole languages derive from a single grammar with a restricted list of categories and operations. However, grammars of individual Creoles will differ from this grammar to a varying extent: The degree of difference will correlate very closely with the quantity of dominant-language input, which in turn is controlled by extralinguistic factors. Alternative explanations of the above phenomena are surveyed, in particular, substratum theory and monogenesis: Both are found inadequate to account for the facts. Primary acquisition is examined in light of the general hypothesis, and it is suggested that the bioprogram provides a skeletal model of language which the child can then readily convert into the target language. Cases of systematic error and precocious learning provide indirect support for the hypothesis. Some conjectures are made concerning the evolutionary origins of the bioprogram and what study of Creoles and related topics might reveal about language origins.

The Nature of a Creole Continuum

Hitherto, post-Saussurean linguistic theories have been unable to provide satisfactory descriptions of a creole continuum. This paper reviews previous attempts in the field, and indicates the need for a different theoretical orientation-one which would replace static, synchronic models of polar dialects with a single dynamic model incorporating both these and all the intermediate variations. In support of this argument, two sub-systems of the Guyanese creole continuumthe copulative and the pronominal-are described in terms of the dynamic evolution of the continuum as a whole; and it is demonstrated that, far from being an area of random variation, such a continuum represents a series of developmental stages ordered in accordance with basic principles of linguistic change. Finally, it is claimed that both the theory and the methodology advanced here cannot be limited to creole situations, but must have universal validity.1

More than nature needs? A reply to Premack

Premack (1985) has given us a fascinating, and, on the whole, a just overview of animal language studies. However, some of his conclusions are unlikely to predict with accuracy the future of the field. To a large extent, this is due to his misunderstanding of the mechanisms of evolution, which in turn leads him to regard human language as much more of an evolutionary anomaly than it really is. Premack (p. 281) claims that “the two principal peculiarities of human language [syntactic classes and structure-dependent rules] are an evolutionary embarrassment” because they make language “vastly more powerful than one can account for in terms of selective fitness” (p. 282) and because “one wonders if there are any functions of language for which they are needed” (p. 281). One recalls the words of Shakespeare’s King Lear:

Confrontational scavenging as a possible source for language and cooperation

The emergence of language and the high degree of cooperation found among humans seems to require more than a straightforward enhancement of primate traits. Some triggering episode unique to human ancestors was likely necessary. Here it is argued that confrontational scavenging was such an episode. Arguments for and against an established confrontational scavenging niche are discussed, as well as the probable effects of such a niche on language and co-operation. Finally, several possible directions for future research are suggested.

Language first, then shared intentionality, then a beneficent spiral

Tomasello et al. give a good account of how shared intentionality develops in children, but a much weaker one of how it might have evolved. They are unduly hasty in dismissing the emergence of language as a triggering factor. An alternative account is suggested in which language provided the spark, but thereafter language and shared intentionality coevolved.

Okay for content words, but what about functional items?

Though Bloom makes a good case that learning content-word meanings requires no task-specific apparatus, he does not seriously address problems inherent in learning the meanings of functional items. Evidence from creole languages suggests that the latter process presupposes at least some task-specific mechanisms, perhaps including a list of the limited number of semantic distinctions that can be expressed via functional items, as well as default systems that may operate in cases of impoverished input.

The child, the bioprogram and the input data: a commentary on Cziko

The syntax of any given language seems now to be best regarded as the result of interaction between a small set of principles, invariant for all species members, and the properties of the target lexicon (themselves selected from an inventory of all language-possible lexical properties). Creoles thus owe their similarities to the fact that, for every creole, the same set of principles interacts with a lexicon that has, in each case, been largely stripped of grammatical morphemes and their properties by the process of pidginization. What difference should this make to our view of acquisition? Instead of blindly pursuing an unrolling genetic program until it collides with a wall of resistant environmental fact, the child is perhaps better conceptualized as scanning input for morphemes that will have the properties entailed by syntactic principles. Let us see how this would affect the acquisition of TMA. Among universal principles are those that establish X’-structure. From these the child knows that in order to combine subject (NP) and predicate (VP), the latter must be inserted as specifier and complement of a head (INFL) so as to form the superphrase IP. The child is therefore on the

Beyond the mirror neuron – the smoke neuron?

Mirror neurons form a poor basis for Arbibs account of language evolution, failing to explain the creativity that must precede imitation, and requiring capacities (improbable in hominids) for categorizing situations and unambiguously miming them. They also commit Arbib to an implausible holophrastic protolanguage. His model is further vitiated by failure to address the origins of symbolization and the real nature of syntax.

Constructivism, nativism, and explanatory adequacy

Constructivism is the most recent in a long line of failed attempts to discredit nativism. It seeks support from true (but irrelevant) facts, wastes its energy on straw men, and jumps logical gaps; but its greatest weakness lies in its failure to match nativisms explanation of a wide range of disparate phenomena, particularly in language acquisition.

Language origins and evolutionary plausibility

Newmeyer is one of the few formal linguists willing both to appreciate work outside the orthodox generative canon and to explain the aims and activities of formalists to outsiders. Now he tries to resolve seemingly irreconcilable differences between formalists and functionalists over the origins of language, correctly identifying the crucial weakness in each camp: formalist unwillingness to admit evolutionary explanations (since to do so might let functionalism in) and functionalist unwillingness to accept the autonomy of syntax (since to do so might let formalism in).