Editing Creole language (section)

===Gradualist and developmental hypotheses===
One class of creoles might start as [[pidgin]]s, rudimentary second languages improvised for use between speakers of two or more non-intelligible native languages. Keith Whinnom (in {{Harvcoltxt|Hymes|1971}}) suggests that pidgins need three languages to form, with one (the superstrate) being clearly dominant over the others. The lexicon of a pidgin is usually small and drawn from the vocabularies of its speakers, in varying proportions. Morphological details like word [[inflection]]s, which usually take years to learn, are omitted; the syntax is kept very simple, usually based on strict word order. In this initial stage, all aspects of the speech – syntax, lexicon, and pronunciation – tend to be quite variable, especially with regard to the speaker's background.

If a pidgin manages to be learned by the children of a community as a native language, it may become fixed and acquire a more complex grammar, with fixed phonology, syntax, morphology, and syntactic embedding. Pidgins can become full languages in only a single [[generation]]. "Creolization" is this second stage where the pidgin language develops into a fully developed native language. The vocabulary, too, will develop to contain more and more items according to a rationale of lexical enrichment.<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Wardhaugh|2002|pp=56–57}}</ref>