The two main theories on the rise and development of pidgin and especially creole languages are presented by their main proponents: Derek Bickerton for the nature hypothesis, i.e. the triggering of the bioprogramme of universals, and Peter Mühlhäusler for the nurture hypothesis, i.e. the social needs experienced by the speakers of a newly developing variety. Most of the other papers discuss the data on pidgins and creoles in the light of either of the two conflicting hypotheses. These data are related to a variety of languages such as Black English in South Carolina (USA); Negro-Dutch in St. Thomas Island; a French-based pidgin in Burundi; Khoi-Khoi Dutch, Malay Afrikaans and Afrikaans as a creolised and partly decreolised standard in South Africa; the Mexican-Indian language Cora and British Jamaican English. These data reveal that the traditional pidgin-creole dichotomy must be widened into a much more complex continuum, comprising not only a pidgin and creole phase, but also a post-creole phase, and a near-standard or new standard phase and that it must account for intricate processes of massive borrowing.

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