[citation needed] Bickerton puts emphasis on children's contribution to the development of a creole and the abrupt character of this process.
For example, in Bickerton (1983), he exhibits ungrammatical utterances made by English-speaking children between the ages of two and four, and argues that they are very similar to perfectly grammatical sentences of English-based creole languages: Normally, the grammar behind such utterances made by children is eventually altered as parents continue to model a grammar different from this innate one.
Also, Singler (1986) points out that children were scarce on plantations, where creoles appeared, for several reasons, including absence of women as well as high rates of sterility, miscarriage, and infant mortality.
However, according to Mühlhäusler (1986), the differences between the speech of children and adults in Tok Pisin are so big that communication is drastically hindered.
Thus anterior tense may be marked by words such as bin in English-based creoles (from been), or té in French-based creoles (from été), a future or subjunctive tense may be marked by go (from English go) or al (from French aller), and a non-punctual (non-stative) aspect by a word such as stei (from English stay).
[citation needed] Bickerton proposed in 1976 an empirical test of his theory, which involved putting families speaking mutually unintelligible languages on a previously uninhabited island for three years.