ABSTRACT
According to Derek Bickerton's (1984) Language Bio-program Hypothesis (LBH), creole genesis, the process by which a Pidgin language develops into a Creole, can only be explained by appealing to Chomskian nativism. Contra B ickerton, substratists contend that creole genesis is influenced, crucially, by substratum languages. We propose to review the nativist/substratist debate in creolistics under the light of connectionist theory. An analysis of simple recurrent networks exposed to different pidgincum-substrate environments may shed light, we suggest, upon the issue of whether a Universal Grammar (UG) is required.
