Second language acquisition scholars have long looked to pidgin and creole studies for insights into the nature of interlanguage. For example, Andersen (1983) discussed the psychological processes of pidginization and creolization. Pidginization is SLA under conditions of severely restricted input and results in a variety (an incipient pidgin language or the beginning stages of an interlanguage) with a small set of lexical items, analytic and highly variable syntax, and minimal stylistic alternatives. Creolization is first language acquisition where a pidgin language serves as the input. In these circumstances, children create new form-meaning relationships that are not present in the pidgin, relying on the innate language-making capacity that Bickerton (1984) called the bioprogram. Thus, a creole language is a fully complex language that involves a radical restructuring of the lexifier language. Andersen (1983) coined the term nativization to include both processes, which, he noted, represent movement toward an internal norm. When pidgin and creole speakers come into greater contact with speakers of the superstrate, input is increased and the contact varieties are restructured in the direction of the standard language, a process Andersen called denativization.

Holm discusses five contact languages for which some degree of nativization and denativization have occurred: African-American English (AAE), Afrikaans, Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese, nonstandard Caribbean Spanish, and vernacular lects of Reunionnais French. All five have reduced inflectional morphology in comparison to the European languages from which they evolved. Also, they show a similar reduction with regard to the marking of plurality, gender, possession, and other features of the noun phrase. Additionally, Holm finds that these languages have some features of the substrate African languages and of fully creolized languages. None of them, however, have ever shown evidence of the radical restructuring that is characteristic of a creole language. They are, therefore, properly characterized not as creoles but as partially restructured vernaculars (PRVs). Holm's account of the development of AAE causes him to question the story of the origins of AAE told in many linguistics textbooks: Slaves brought from Africa to plantations on Caribbean islands and the North American mainland developed a pidgin English, which was creolized by their children. Since then, AAE has been changing in the direction of standard English and is now in the last stages of decreolization. Holm says that this story applies to Gullah, but that AAE was never a creole. Rather, it is descended from a PRV, what others have called a semi-creole.

Holm notes that sociolinguistic history is as important to the definition of a creole or PRV as its structural characteristics. A crucial factor in whether language contact produces a true creole or a PRV involves the ratio of nonnative to native speakers of the superstrate. Bickerton (1984) claimed that if this ratio reached 80% during a relatively short period, perhaps due to the massive importation of slaves, the bioprogram would be triggered and a creole language would be created (p. 177). Otherwise, a PRV would develop. Holm shows that this high ratio was never reached for the languages in question. With regard to AAE, he notes, “In most parts of the American South … English was not fully creolized but did undergo some degree of restructuring as it was acquired by speakers of African languages … and was increasingly learned from other African Americans speaking a distinct lect of local English that became the forerunner of modern AAE” (p. 33).

Holm's account of the creation of PRVs fits with Andersen's (1983) story of nativization followed by denativization, and this leads to the question of how similar a PRV is to an interlanguage. An obvious difference is that interlanguages are not usually used as a medium of communication among their speakers. There are, however, circumstances, such as French immersion programs in Quebec, where second language learners do use an interlanguage to communicate among themselves. Indeed, Swain and Lapkin (1989) and others have reported that in these classrooms, a pidginized variety has developed. There are, then, fascinating similarities between PRVs and interlanguages, and this volume is an excellent resource for SLA scholars who wish to examine them.