Derek Bickerton will discuss his life-long work on creoles (nativized pidgins or contact languages) in various parts of the world (including Guyana, Hawaii, Colombia and the Seychelles) and their significance for linguistics. Among other things he will consider (1) The evidence (pro and con) that creoles offer for an innate bioprogram or language faculty; (2) the extent to which creoles should be considered "exceptional" languages, the product of circumstances different from that of most other examples of language change-a position that DeGraff and Mufwene have recently challenged; and (3) the significance of creoles for sociolinguistics and vice versa.

This talk is based on Bickerton's new book, Bastard Tongues: A Trailblazing Linguist Finds Clues to our Common Humanity in the World's Lowliest Languages (http://www.derekbickerton.com/books.php).

References

Goldstein, L., Byrd, D., and Saltzman, E. (2006) The role of vocal tract gestural action units in understanding the evolution of phonology. In M. Arbib (Ed.) From Action to Language: The Mirror Neuron System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 215-249.

Nam, H. (in press). A competitive, coupled oscillator model of moraic structure: Split-gesture dynamics focusing on positional asymmetry. In Cole, J. and Hualde, J. (eds). Papers in Laboratory phonology 9. Berlin: Mouton deGruyter.

Nam, H. and Saltzman, E. 2003. A Competitive, Coupled Oscillator Model of Syllable Structure. Proceeding 15th ICPhS 2003, Barcelona, 2253-2256.