Derek Bickerton
British American linguist (1926-2018) · United States · On the map · Academics · Died at 91
Derek Bickerton was an English-born American linguist, novelist, and professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Derek Bickerton is read about 11 times a day, in 15 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 12 June 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 60 days, one point a day.
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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.
