Nativization is the process whereby a language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

 gains native speaker

Native Speaker

Native Speaker is Chang-Rae Lee’s first novel. In Native Speaker, he creates a man named Henry Park who tries to assimilate into American society and become a “native speaker.”-Plot summary:...

s. This happens necessarily where a second language

Second language

A second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....

 used by adult parents becomes the native language of their children. Nativization has been of particular interest to linguists, and to creolists more specifically, where the second language concerned is a pidgin

Pidgin

A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...

.

Several explanations of creole genesis

Creole language

A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...

 have relied on prior nativization of a pidgin as a stage in achieving creoleness. This is true for Hall's

Robert A. Hall

Robert A. Hall, CAE, served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate.-Background and Military Career:Hall was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1946, graduated from Collingswood High School, Collingswood, NJ in 1964, and joined the Marine Corps that summer. He served four years from 1964 until 1968,...

 (1966) notion of the pidgin-creole life cycle as well as Bickerton

Derek Bickerton

Derek Bickerton is a linguist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Based on his work in creole languages in Guyana and Hawaii, he has proposed that the features of creole languages provide powerful insights into the development of language both by individuals and as a...

's language bioprogram theory.

There are few undisputed examples of a creole arising from nativization of a pidgin by children. The Tok Pisin

Tok Pisin

Tok Pisin is a creole spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in that country...

 language reported by is one example where such a conclusion could be reached by scientific observation. A counterexample is the case where children of Gastarbeiter

Gastarbeiter

Gastarbeiter is German for "guest worker." It refers to migrant workers who had moved to West Germany mainly in the 1960s and 70s, seeking work as part of a formal guest worker programme...

 parents speaking pidgin German acquired German seamlessly without creolization. Broad treatments of creolization

Creolization

Creolization is a concept that refers to the process in which new African American cultures emerge in the New World. As a result of colonization there was a mixture between people of indigenous, African, and European decent, which became to be understood as Creolization...

phenomena such as acknowledge now as a matter of standard that the pidgin-nativization scheme is only one of many explanations with possible theoretical validity.