The idea that pidgins could provide a clue to the evolution of language is generally credited to Derek Bickerton. Since the structures of pidgins are more rudimentary compared to their source languages, Bickerton argues that speakers of pidgins express the ‘protolanguage’, which he defines as a ‘primitive mode of linguistics expression that is distinct from full languages’ (Bickerton, 1990). Other speakers who express the protolanguage are animals that learn human language, children younger than two years old, and humans such as Genie who are not exposed to languages in early childhood.
Although the speakers of pidgins have their own languages, they are forced to communicate with a more rudimentary system which does not have regular syntactic structures. For instance, the lexicon of pidgins created by plantation workers in European colonies draw heavily from the languages of their colonial masters. These speakers of early pidgin thus communicates with ‘sound-meaning correspondences’, which is a feature of protolanguages, than communicating by utilizing the syntactic structure present in full languages with their European masters (Roberge, 2011). Bickerton theorized that a protolanguage could have been developed by Homo erectus approximately 1.5 to 3 million years ago, thus studying the process of pidgin formation could reveal some insights about the emergence of language in early hominids since pidgins could exhibit features of protolanguages as well.
Botha (2006) further discusses several aspects that one might be able to analyse from the study of pidgin formation to extrapolate on language evolution, and how similar or different these aspects in the pidgin environment are to the formation of languages in early hominids, which will be elaborated in the following paragraphs.
Arguably, the environment in which pidgins developed is different from the environment where the first human languages emerged. Specifically, in terms of linguistics environment, pidgins could draw references from ‘antecedent languages’, which are languages that those who created pidgins already possessed. Thus, one can trace the source languages of a pidgin, such as Pidgin Fijian which draws from English and Fijian as its source languages. In contrast, when the early humans created the first languages they do not have such antecedent languages where they can draw ‘input materials’ from, since they communicated with gestures prior to the invention of languages. Thus, the specific processes of pidgin formation are likely to differ from those of early language formation.
Another aspect which pidgin formation and emergence of languages differ is the people who created pidgins and the early hominids who created the first languages. Biologically, the brain structure of early hominids and people who created the pidgins are different in important ways, be it general cognitive capacities or language faculty. Such differences must be taken into consideration when comparing the formation of pidgins to formation of the first human languages.
An aspect in which pidgins and the first human languages are similar is their lexicon and syntax. Both languages exhibit an elementary syntax with a limited lexicon and Mufwene (2002) points out the possibility that incipient pidgins maintain the most fundamental and deeply rooted parts of the language in terms of structure, which could provide clues to the formation of the first human languages. In terms of pragmatics, since the syntax and lexicon in pidgins are restricted, such as the lack of grammatical markers, context becomes an important factor to understand a pidgin utterance. While early languages could possibly be restricted in similar nature such that pragmatics play a large role in understanding their utterances, there is no concrete theory yet to relate how similar pidgins and early languages might be in this aspect.
With regards to the developmental processes of pidgins and the first human languages, the evolution of the first human languages would likely evolve from gestural to vocal communications, which eventually result in the development of phonetic linguistic systems. Meanwhile, pidgins are form as a result of language contact between two groups that do not share a common language. Therefore, Mufwene argues that the gradualness of pidgin formation could not be compared with the evolution of the first human languages, since the evolution from gestural communications to languages would have spanned a much longer time than the formation of a pidgin.
However, Mufwene does notes that the principles of competition and selection likely applied to both pidgin formation and early languages. Early language evolution is a ‘population process’, and vocal communication would provide several advantages to survival, such as ‘freeing the hands’ and ‘transcending the visual field’, thereby leading it to be favoured over gestural communications. Similarly, pidgins are formed as communal languages, where speakers made ‘mutual accommodations’ to reduce the differences in their idiolects, thereby giving the language regularity in terms of structure, adhering to the competition and selection principles through these accommodations.