DEFINING THE TARGET LANGUAGE IN LANGUAGE GENESIS


simplify their languages in the same way), the variation that exists
among different speech communities also shows that SRs are, to a
certain extent, conventionalized and language-specific. Conventionality
is most evident in phonological and lexical characteristics, while
universal aspects are most notable in prosodic and syntactic
characteristics.
 The interaction of FT and BL can be seen as a summation of elements
of both in which features that appear in both are more likely to appear
in the resulting norms of communication (i.e. the pidgin). F&D see the
interaction between these two registers as a rather complex process
of mutual accommodation: "The speaker of A who is using his FT in
talking to a speaker of B may adjust his FT to the latter's BL to an
extent not found in other uses of simplified registers [such as BT to a
child where there is an obvious pedagogical concern], similarly, the
FT that the speaker of B hears may be the source of features in his BL
that he would not have heard from normal A"(1997:102).
 F&D define pidginization as the rapid structural modification of a
language in contact situations in which it serves both as the target of
broken language and the source of foreigner talk. It is generally limited
to situations in which the structural change is relatively rapid, resulting
from the communicative interaction between native and non-native
speakers of the common source/ target language. According to F&D,
the ideal pidgin, in effect, reduces or simplifies the TL presumably based
on some universal constraints of simplicity and then maps it onto the
learner's LI. According to F&D, pidgins are reduced, hybridized versions
of a source language (target language).
 F&D stress the importance of appealing to the notion of
interlanguage. Acquisition takes place gradually and is characterized
by successive changes in the learner's knowledge of the target language
(TL). At any point in the speaker's development, s/he has a partial
linguistic system, which approximates the TL. This system can be
looked at in terms of an approximative system (Nemser 1971) or an
interlanguage (Selinker 1972). The observations made in light of these
systems may answer questions about the nature of human language
and language acquisition.
 According to F&D's model, FT is the target language to be acquired.
Bickerton (1977) put forth the restricted input hypothesis, claiming
that pidginization is L2 learning with restricted input while creolization
is LI learning with restricted input. He holds that the first native speakers
of the creole learned whatever variety of pidgin that the CFP spoke,