ABSTRACT
The standard view sees pidginization and creolization as mirror-image processes and assumes a prior pidgin history for creoles. This implies a twostage development. The first involves rapid and drastic restructuring to produce a language variety which is reduced and simplified. The second step consists of the elaboration of this variety as its functions expand and it becomes nativized. From a sociological point of view, what linguists call a creole serves as the native or primary language of most of its speakers. Pidgin speakers, who have another language, can get by with a minimum of grammatical apparatus, but the linguistic resources of a creole must be adequate to fulfil the communicative needs of human language users.
