bioprogramme/bioprogram hypothesis

A hypothesis in the study of CREOLE LANGUAGES that creoles are the inventions of the children growing up in the forts or on the plantations of the newly formed colonies. These children, who would hear only the highly simplified structures of PIDGINS around them, used their INNATE linguistic capacities to transform the pidgins into a natural language. This account, introduced by Derek Bickerton (b. 1926), claims to be able to explain the similarity and simplicity of creole languages: they are similar because the innate capacity applied was UNIVERSAL, and they are simpler because only the most basic language structures were represented. The study of creole languages, in this view, provides special insight into the character of universal grammar.