Language bioprogram theory

Language bioprogram theory

The Language bioprogram theory or Language bioprogram hypothesis (LBH) is a theory arguing that the structural similarities between different creole languages cannot be solely attributed to their superstrate and substrate languages. As articulated mostly by Derek Bickerton, [See Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1981, Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1983 Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1984, Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1988, and Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1991] creolization occurs when the linguistic exposure of children in a community consists solely of a highly unstructured pidgin; these children use their innate language capacity to transform the pidgin, which characteristically has high syntactic variability [Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1983|p=116] into a language with a highly structured grammar. As this capacity is universal, the grammars of these new languages have many similarities.

yntactic similarities

By comparing Hawaiian Pidgin and Creole, Bickerton identified twelve features which he believed to be integral to any creole:Fact|date=February 2008
*Sentence structure: Subject Verb Object word order, with similar mechanisms for using word order to apply focus to one of these constituents.
*Articles: definite article applied to specific and identified noun phrase, indefinite article applied to specific and newly-asserted noun phrase, and zero for nonspecific noun phrase.
*TMA (Tense-Modality-Aspect) verb 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. [Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1983|p=122] Although this hypothesis has enjoyed much popularity, it has ultimately been criticized.Who|date=February 2008 First of all, Bickerton in his LBH, 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.Fact|date=February 2008 Such a definition excludes many languages that might be called creoles.Fact|date=February 2008 Moreover, lack of historical data makes it often impossible to evaluate such claims.Fact|date=February 2008 In addition, many of the creole languages that fit this definition do not display all the twelve features,Fact|date=February 2008 while, according to Harvcoltxt|Muhlhausler|1986, the left-out creoles often display more of them. Another problem, raised by Harvcoltxt|Mufwene|1986, 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.

On the other hand, Bickerton, puts emphasis on children's contribution to the development of a creole and the abrupt character of this process. For example, in Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1983, 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:

Over time, the grammar behind such utterances are altered when 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. [Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1983|p=122]

Harvcoltxt|Thomason|Kaufman|1988 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 a contributions to the development of the emergent creole. Also, Harvcoltxt|Singler|1986 points out that children were scarce on plantations, where creoles appeared, for several reasons such as: absence of women, high rates of sterility, miscarriage, and infant mortality.

However, according to Harvcoltxt|Muhlhasusler|1986, the differences between the speech of children and adults in Tok Pisin are so big that communication is drastically hindered.

Verbal system

The verb conjugation is typically close to an ideal Tense-Modality-Aspect pattern. In this system, the absence or presence of auxiliary verbs 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-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 Harvcoltxt|McWhorter|1992, 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.Fact|date=February 2008

ee also

*Monogenetic theory of pidgins

References

Bibliography

*citation
last=Bickerton
first= Derek
authorlink=Derek Bickerton
title=Roots of Language
publisher=Karoma Publishers
year=1981
ISBN=0-89720-044-6

*citation
last=Bickerton
first= Derek
authorlink=Derek Bickerton
year=1983
title=Creole Languages
journal=Scientific American
volume=249
issue=8
pages=116-122

*citation
last=Bickerton
first= Derek
authorlink=Derek Bickerton
year=1984
title=The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis
journal=The Behavioral and Brain Sciences
volume=7

*citation
last=Bickerton
first=Derek
authorlink=Derek Bickerton
editor=Newmeyer, F.J.
year=1988
chapter=Creole languages and the bioprogram
title=Linguistics: The Cambridge survey
volume=2
place=Cambridge
publisher=Cambridge University Press

*citation
last=Bickerton
first=Derek
authorlink=Derek Bickerton
year=1991
title=On the Supposed 'Gradualness' of Creole Development
journal=Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
volume=6

* Hall, Robert (1966). "Pidgin and Creole languages". Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
*citation
last=McWhorter
first=John H.
authorlink=John McWhorter
year=1992
title=Substratal influence in Saramaccan serial verb construction.
journal=Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
volume=4

* citation
last=Mufwene
first=Salikoko
authorlink=Salikoko Mufwene
editor=Muysken, Pieter
editor2=Smith, Norval
year=1986
chapter=The Universalist and Substrate Hypotheses Complement One Another
title=Substrata versus universals in creole gensis
place=Amsterdam
publisher=Benjamins

* citation
last=Muhlhausler
first=P.
year=1986
title=Pidgin and Creole linguistics
place=Oxford
publisher=Blackwell Publishing

*citation
last=Thomason
first=Sarah
authorlink=Sarah Thomason
last2=Kaufman
first2=Terrence
authorlink2=Terrence Kaufman
year=1988
title=Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics
place=Berkely
publisher=University of California Press
edition=first

*citation
last=Singler
first=J.V.
year=1986
title=Short Note
journal=Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages"
volume=1


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