**** Bickerton's narrowing of the definition of creolization

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Perhaps the fault of his statement of thesis is in trying to exclude anything outside his subset of generationally and temporally specific pidgin and creoles from the general definitions of the same, adopting definitions such as "classical" creoles. In other words, much of the divisiveness over his work is a battle to define the meaning of the archetypes. Bickerton wants all definitions of pidgins and creoles to meet his criteria, perhaps in some form of continuua. Critics in turn want Bickerton's hypothesis to apply to creoles regardless of the historical locus of the lects from which they derive their data.