**** Bioprogram and social factors

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The bioprogram is not exclusive of social effects

The strong form of the bioprogram hypothesis has been disposed of--first by its author (Bickerton 198?, --pp) and then, as he predicted, by critics who assume that the he seeks to explain all features of creole systems in terms of the bioprogram and at the expense of input from specific cultural groups (Bickerton, Alleyne, Goodman? Holm? Luchessi-- for one example, compare Roots of Language, v, 300-302, 303-304, with Holm's summary of it, 1:60-68, esp. 61, 66). }

Bickerton narrowly constrains the sociohistorical and demographic situations in which the bioprogram emerges as part of the realized grammar of a creole language. It surfaces under the following conditions, which may themselves vary along a continuum when considered in aggregate.

• - The individual is a first generation creole speaker
• - The balance of power in the population is skewed between a

heterogenous substrate and a homogenous superstrate

-- The members of the heterogenous group have been socially,

and usually geographically, displaced.

Even under these constraints, he never rules out the possibility of social, rather than biological influence, asserting that substrate/superstrate issues need to be much more carefully worked out than they are at present, not that they are absent; and that they need to be considered in conjunction with the evidence concerning natural language capacities, not in isolation.