Derek Bickerton

Derek Bickerton (March 25, 1926 – March 5, 2018) was an English-born American linguist, novelist, and professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. 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. His novels have been featured in the works of the Sun Ra Revival Post Krautrock Archestra, through spoken word and musical themes.

Background Bickerton was born in Cheshire in 1926. A graduate of the University of Cambridge, England in 1949, Derek Bickerton entered academic life in the 1960s, first as a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, and then, after a year's postgraduate work in linguistics at the University of Leeds, as senior lecturer in linguistics at the University of Guyana (1967–71). For twenty-four years he was Associate Professor and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (1972–96), having meanwhile received a PhD in linguistics in 1976 from the University of Cambridge. He was the father of contemporary artist Ashley Bickerton. His other children are Julie Bickerton Bravata and Jim Bickerton.

Research To answer questions about creole formation, in the late 1970s Bickerton proposed an experiment that involves marooning on an island six couples speaking six different languages, along with children too young to have acquired their parents’ languages. The National Science Foundation deemed the proposed experiment unethical and refused to fund it.