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Derek Bickerton

Author profile

born

March 25, 1926

gender

male

genre

Nonfiction

influences

Noam Chomsky

About this author

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Derek Bickerton (born March 25, 1926) is a linguist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Based on his work in creole languages in Guyana and Hawaii, he has proposed that the features of creole languages provide powerful insights into the development of language both by individuals and as a feature of the human species. He is the originator and main proponent of the language bioprogram hypothesis according to which the similarity of creoles is due to their being formed from a prior pidgin by children who all share a universal human innate grammar capacity.
Bickerton also wrote several novels. He is the father of contemporary artist Ashley Bickerton.

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Books by Derek Bickerton

Average rating: 3.90 · 211 ratings · 51 reviews · 13 distinct works

	Bastard Tongues: A Trailblazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World's Lowliest Languages 3.73 avg rating — 110 ratings — published 2008 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Adam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans 4.09 avg rating — 64 ratings — published 2009 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Language and Species 4.19 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 1990 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Language and Human Behavior 3.86 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 1995 — 2 editions	My rating:
	King of the Sea 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1979 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Ashley Bickerton by Derek Bickerton, Jake Chapman, Nick McDonell 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2011 — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Desert and the City 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2009	My rating:
	Biological Foundations and Origin of Syntax by Derek Bickerton (Editor), Eörs Szathmáry (Editor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2009	My rating:
	Dynamics of a Creole System 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:
	Roots Of Language 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Derek Bickerton

“When the infernal machine of plantation slavery began to grind its wheels, iron laws of economics came into play, laws that would lead to immeasurable suffering but would also, and equally inevitably, produce new languages all over the world – languages that ironically, in the very midst of man's inhumanity to man, demonstrated the essential unity of humanity.”
― Derek Bickerton, Bastard Tongues: A Trailblazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World's Lowliest Languages

tags: hawaii , linguistics

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