Derek Bickerton (born March 25, 1926) is a linguist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu. Based on his work in creole languages in Guyana and Hawaii, he has proposed that the features of creoles provide powerful insights into the development of language both by individuals and as a feature of the human species.

Observations on creole language formation

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In his book Roots of Language, Bickerton speculates on a theory to answer three questions:

1. How did creole languages originate?
2. How do children acquire language?
3. How did the language faculty originate as a feature of the human species?

Speculation on the origins of language

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In Language and Species, he suggests that all three questions might be answered by speculating that the origin of language might be traced to the evolution of representation systems and symbolic thinking, together with a later development of formal syntax. Using primitive communication faculties, which then evolved in parallel, mental models became shared representations subject to cultural evolution. In Lingua ex Machina he and William Calvin revise this speculative theory by considering the biological foundations of symbolic representation and their influence on the evolution of the brain.

Bibliography

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• Tropicana, A Novel., 1963
• Dynamics Of A Creole System, 1975
• Language and Human Behavior, 1995
• Lingua ex Machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brain, 2000 (co-author with William H. Calvin)

External links

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• A brief self-description related to Lingua Ex Machina.

1926 births | Living people | American linguists | Autodidacts

Derek Bickerton