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The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis

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The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis THE BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (1984) 7, 173-221 Printed in the United States of America The language bioprogram hypothesis Derek Bickerton Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822 Abstract: 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. Keywords: child language; Creole; evolution; glottogenesis; grammar; language; language acquisition; language origins; learnability; linguistic universals; pidgin; psycholinguistics 1.0 The basic hypothesis their native language; theoretically this process can occur at any stage in a pidgin's history, but for reasons that will A central issue with respect to human language, and one become apparent, we shall be dealing only with Creoles that is far from resolved, concerns the extent and specific- that have come into existence very early in the develop- ity of the mechanisms that underlie it. At one extreme lie ment of their antecedent pidgins. It has long been recog- the views of Chomsky [see "Rules and Representations," nized by creolists that Creoles somehow "expand" and BBS 3(1) 1980] and his associates, who posit a "mental render more complex the pidgin grammar that precedes organ" that is as modular and as functionally specialized as them (Hall 1966), but until recently there was no clear the human heart or lungs. At the other extreme lie those picture of what constituted this expansion, and no indica- of many empiricists who hold that the human mind is a tion as to how the expansion was achieved. The LBH general-purpose problem-solving device, no particular claims that the innovative aspects of Creole grammar are portion of which is specifically devoted to language. For inventions on the part of the first generation of children the past two decades at least, debate has ranged over who have a pidgin as their linguistic input, rather than fairly well known territory: the extent to which language features transmitted from preexisting languages. The is like or unlike other objects of human learning, the role LBH claims, further, that such inventions show a degree of input in the normal acquisition of language by the of similarity, across wide variations in linguistic back- child, the ontological status of innate knowledge, and so ground, that is too great to be attributed to chance. forth. In the sections that follow, I examine evidence from Finally, the LBH claims that the most cogent explanation a relatively little known area of human language which of this similarity is that it derives from the structure of a clearly bears on this issue; I argue in favor of a language species-specific program for language, genetically coded bioprogram hypothesis (henceforth LBH) that suggests and expressed, in ways still largely mysterious, in the that the infrastructure of language is specified at least as structures and modes of operation of the human brain. narrowly as Chomsky has claimed. This general argument, at varying levels of specificity The languages to be examined are known as Creoles, and detail, has been developed in previous publications which in turn have derived from pidgin languages. A (Bickerton 1974; 1977; 1979; and especially 1981). How- pidgin is an auxiliary language that arises when speakers ever, since the appearance of these versions, there have of several mutually unintelligible languages are in close been a number of developments that permit a more contact; by definition, it has no native speakers. A Creole sharply focused and explicit presentation of the LBH. comes into existence when children acquire a pidgin as These developments include studies by Philip Baker on © 7984 Cambridge University Press 0140-525X1841020173-49IS06.00 THE BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (1984) 7:2 173 Bickerton: Language bioprogram hypothesis the origins of Mauritius Creole (Baker 1976; 1982; Baker In the case of Creole speakers, there are two pos- & Come 1982), studies of Haitian syntax by Claire sibilities. The structures that distinguish them from Lefebvre and her associates (Lefebvre, Magloire-Holly & pidgin speakers were acquired either in childhood or in Piou 1982), extensive fieldwork on Saramaccan syntax by adulthood. If Creole speakers acquired the structures as Frank Byrne (Byrne 1982; forthcoming), and an ongoing adults, they must have done so by means of acquisitiona. longitudinal study of the linguistic development of a blind processes equally available to pidgin speakers, who were two-year-old by Robert Wilson. also adults. Yet we find structures that are shared by all locally born (i.e. Creole) speakers and no immigrant (i.e pidgin) speakers. Such structures can only have been 2.0 The arguments for invention acquired by processes inaccessible to pidgin speakers. The only plausible candidates for such processes are the In order to support the LBH it is necessary to show that ones peculiar to children, which, according to the so- all, or at least a substantial part, of the grammar of a called critical period hypothesis (Krashen 1973; Len- language can be produced in the absence of the genera- neberg 1967; Scovell 1981), are inaccessible to adults. tion-to-generation transmission of particular languages Therefore, forms unique to locally born speakers must that is a normal characteristic of our species. Note that have been acquired by them as children. although evidence for this point would still fall short of Given that the present speech of pidgin speakers is as demonstrating the LBH as a whole, failure to find support rudimentary as (or less rudimentary than) their speech for it would be fatal to the hypothesis. It is not necessary, shortly after arrival in Hawaii, we can illustrate the nature however, to demonstrate that the LBH specifies the only of 1900—1920 pidgin by examples drawn from speakers means through which novel linguistic structures can who arrived in Hawaii during that period (in each case the arise, as some contributors to Hill's (1979) volume seem speaker's native language and date of arrival are given in to have assumed. parentheses). Even the lexicon of this pidgin was highly Creole languages arise where large numbers of people unstable, as (l)-(3) show: speaking mutually unintelligible languages are forced to 1. kote, motete, awl frend giv, no? (Japanese, 1918). associate on a permanent basis but have no preexisting buy, take-back, all friend give, INTERROGATIVE. language in common. Such conditions were produced par "[They] buy [presents], take [them] back, and give excellence by European colonialism in the period [them] to all their friends, don't they?" 1500-1900, and were most recently satisfied in Hawaii in 2. insai lepo aen hanapa aen blaenket, pau (Visayan, the period 1876-1920. Hawaii is therefore the only place 1916). in the world where it is still possible to study the linguistic inside dirt and cover and blanket, finish phenomena produced under these conditions by direct "[They put the body] in the ground and cover [it examination of surviving speakers from the relevant with a] blanket, that's all." period. 3. mi onli chachi-chachi go palei, tarin gonon naega In evaluating the Hawaii evidence, one caveat must be bisanis ani (Korean, 1916). borne in mind. This evidence is drawn from a study made I only church go pray, other things I business is-not during 1973-75, of speakers then in their seventies, "I just went to church to pray; other things were not eighties, or even (in a couple of cases) nineties. It can be my business." interpreted as evidence for what happened in the period (The non-English lexical items are Japanese in [1], Ha- 1900-1920 only on the assumption that the speech of waiian in [2] - a form of pidginized Hawaiian was the most individuals does not change appreciably after adulthood widespread means of communication prior to 1900; see is reached. Since this assumption, although common- Bickerton & Wilson (1984) - and Korean in [3]. place in linguistics, may not obtain in the unusual condi- Examples such as (l)-(3) have no recognizable syntax. tions dealt with here, we need to see how it might fail and What fragments of syntax can be recognized are heavily what the consequences of such failure might be. influenced by native-language grammar; thus, in (4), Take first the speech of pidgin speakers, which will be objects precede verbs, as in Japanese, whereas in (5), the shown to be extremely rudimentary in structure.
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