A pidgin does not have native speakers since it is only used in a particular context. However, if the functions of a pidgin increase, the structural complexity of a pidgin would increase as well. The pidgin can then be used more often and more regularly in greater range of contexts and the pidgin becomes more consistent between speakers. Eventually, this expanded pidgin could gain native speakers and the expanded pidgin thus develops into a creole (further elaboration on creole will be discussed under the Creole section).
Tok Pisin is an example of a pidgin gaining native speakers to become a creole. Muysken and Smith (1995) identifies that urban environments are usually where such development happens. Speakers of different ethnicity are in constant contact with each other in such environments, and the pidgin is adopted as the town language. When mixed marriage happens, the children of these couples most likely pick up the pidgin as their home language, thereby acquiring native speakers. Another example is the Hawaii English which reportedly starts out as Hawaii pidgin before becoming a creole. Thus, generally, expanded pidgins have a high chance of becoming creoles.
However, the view that pidgin is an earlier stage in the development of creole is not the consensus as linguists continue to discuss if such a connection between pidgins and creoles is definite. Bakker (1995) argues that there are structural differences between pidgins and creoles, such as the pre-verbal markings of tense and mood that is prevalent in most creoles is absent in pidgins, and that the lexicon of creole is derived from the group with higher status e.g. colonisers, while the lexicon of pidgins is derived from the group with lower status in a contact situation. Furthermore, there are creoles which do not have a pidgin stage and not all pidgins become creoles eventually. For example, there is no evidence that a pidgin stage existed for any Caribbean creole language (Bakker, 1995), and Russonorsk pidgin did not develop into a creole before it died out after the nineteenth century.
Since Bikerton has identified pidgin as a protolanguage, there is a possibility that the development of a simpler system (pidgin) to a more complicated one (creole) could mirror the development from the first human language to the full languages used today. However, it is not possible to make such bold claims about the evolution of the first human language to modern language in comparison to the development of pidgins to creoles, until more conclusive evidence that could determine the exact relationship between pidgins and creoles are found.