Talk:Language bioprogram theory

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Yours truly AlexNewArtBot 17:15, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Articles

The claim that articles are "integral to any creole" can be thrown out immediately by looking at the grammar of creoles that make little or no use of articles, such as Tok Pisin. This is an unsourced claim about a claim of a guy who has apparently only looked at Hawaiian Pidgin and presumably one other creole language (referred to here only as "Creole") and generalised that to "all creoles". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.226.227.203 (talk) 11:07, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Tok Pisin is not a full-blown creole, but a hybrid, partially developed, creole. Creoles proper are languages fully in the sense of English, Tibetan, Mandarin... Esperanto, for that matter. See: Development of Tok Pisin, Tok Pisin, Wikipedia. It's important to understand the context within which Bickerton classified creoles: languages of spontaneous development among communities whose children had no consistent access to an existing language, but rather to pidgins. Obviously existing languages don't all have articles (most would have some kind of larger class—determiners—however), but there seems to be a peculiarity about creoles that they spontaneously and consistently generate articles where there are hardly any to start with. This seems very odd, and in want of motivation. Suggested is the Chomskian idea of innateness, not that articles have an essential role in Chomsky's 'principles'. But they seem to be more robust than his 'parameters'. To be blunt, articles may be in our genes, either being a weak principle or strong parameter. And of course, they can be lost in a language-evolution, just as, to use an analogy, lactose tolerance can be lost. JohndanR (talk) 05:13, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Tense Aspect Particle Ordering

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.

Tok Pisin places the future particle (referred to here as 'irreal particle') earlier, before the predicate marker and in many cases, before even the subject, negating Bickerton's claim of "all observed creole languages". 62.226.227.203 (talk) 11:20, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Well of course Bickerton is wrong if you replace "irreal" with "future", but those are not the same thing. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 22:09, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Again, Tok Pisin is not a fully-developed creole. Creoles, conversely, are fully realized pidgins as languages. And yes, 'irreal' grammatical features are not co-extensive with future features (although there is something of an overlap), it's pointless to erect a strawman over this. 'irreal' approximately corresponds to old-fashioned 'subjunctive' (things pertaining to conjecture, possibility, probability, contingency, etc.). Thus, something of future action can be thought of as possible or planned action, and therefore not happening— a sort of subset of irreality. Finally, Bickerton could be hardly more expert than most of us in not only pidgins (as well as creoles), but Tok Pisin itself, even in the political aspects. I seem to recall he wrote a protest tract called 'Hands Off Tok Pisin!', but I won't be held to that. JohndanR (talk) 05:13, 2 September 2017 (UTC)