Editing Pidgin (section)

== Development ==
The initial development of a pidgin usually requires:

* prolonged, regular contact between the different language communities
* a need to communicate between them
* an absence of (or absence of widespread proficiency in) a widespread, accessible [[interlanguage]]

Keith Whinnom (in {{Harvcoltxt|Hymes|1971}}) suggests that pidgins need three languages to form, with one (the superstrate) being clearly dominant over the others.

Linguists sometimes posit that pidgins can become [[creole language]]s when a generation of children learn a pidgin as their first language,<ref>
For example: {{cite book
| editor1-last     = Campbell
| editor1-first    = John Howland
| editor2-last     = Schopf
| editor2-first    = J. William
| editor2-link     = J. William Schopf
| others           = Contributor: [[University of California, Los Angeles]]. IGPP Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life
| title            = Creative Evolution
| url              = https://books.google.com/books?id=ve38UmPnfO0C
| series           = Life Science Series
| publisher        = Jones & Bartlett Learning
| date = 1994
| page             = 81
| isbn             = 9780867209617
| access-date       = 2014-04-20
| quote            = [...] the children of pidgin-speaking parents face a big problem, because pidgins are so rudimentary and inexpressive, poorly capable of expressing the nuances of a full range of human emotions and life situations. The first generation of such children spontaneously develops a pidgin into a more complex language termed a creole. [...] [T]he evolution of a pidgin into a creole is unconscious and spontaneous.
}}
</ref>
a process that regularizes speaker-dependent variation in grammar. Creoles can then replace the existing mix of languages to become the native language of a community (such as the [[Chavacano language]] in the [[Philippines]], [[Sierra Leone Krio language|Krio]] in [[Sierra Leone]], and [[Tok Pisin]] in [[Papua New Guinea]]). However, not all pidgins become creole languages; a pidgin may die out before this phase would occur (e.g. the [[Mediterranean Lingua Franca]]).

Other scholars, such as [[Salikoko Mufwene]], argue that pidgins and creoles arise independently under different circumstances, and that a pidgin need not always precede a creole nor a creole evolve from a pidgin. Pidgins, according to Mufwene, emerged among trade colonies among "users who preserved their native vernaculars for their day-to-day interactions". Creoles, meanwhile, developed in settlement colonies in which speakers of a European language, often [[indentured servants]] whose language would be far from the standard in the first place, interacted extensively with non-European [[slave]]s, absorbing certain words and features from the slaves' non-European native languages, resulting in a heavily [[basilect]]alized version of the original language. These servants and slaves would come to use the creole as an everyday vernacular, rather than merely in situations in which contact with a speaker of the superstrate was necessary.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mufwene/pidginCreoleLanguage.html |title=Salikoko Mufwene: "Pidgin and Creole Languages" |publisher=Humanities.uchicago.edu |access-date=2010-04-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130603044826/http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mufwene/pidginCreoleLanguage.html |archive-date=2013-06-03 |url-status=dead }}</ref>