John Holm Tribute List

With few exceptions, even linguists thought of pidgin and creole languages as 'aberrant'... if they thought of them at all – that is, as defective and therefore inappropriate as objects of serious study

This time, there are substantial reasons to think that his exciting discovery of a “bioprogram,” an innate predisposition to learn particular categories in human language, is in fact illfounded.
- Letter to New York Review of Books September 23, 1982

Bickerton’s credibility is further marred by his manipulation of facts that run counter to his argument and by his frequent factual errors.
- Letter to New York Review of Books, September 23, 1982

We believe that language was a pidgin, itself an emergency language to bridge the communication gap between two or more groups with no language in common, but unlike a creole, a pidgin is a rudimentary, makeshift language that is no one’s mother tongue.
- Chabacano versus Related Creoles, 2001

Unlike Spain’s American colonies, the Philippines never saw a shift to Spanish among the general population. It remained confined to the relatively few Spanish colonists and their mixed progeny, who spoke a non-creolized variety .
Chabacano versus Related Creoles, 2001

. The slave trade was economically much more important than plantation agriculture, which was carried out mainly to provision the camps since the dry soil was unsuitable for raising sugar.
- Chabacano versus Related Creoles 2001