Some scenarios for Chomskyan innatism seem to suggest that every neonate already has a full 'Aspects grammar' curled up in Broca‘s region. The literalistic reading of “innate” has no place in a bioprogram theory. A true bioprogram would grow, develop, and change just as the physical organism that houses it grows, develops, and changes. Increases in the child’s cognitive abilities (which of course also form part of the bioprogram in its widest sense) would interact with the linguistic component and progressively modify it.
- Bickerton (1981), a pag.171-172

The bioprogram would enjoin just that biuniqueness in form-function and form-meaning relationships which children strive for and which creoles, with a large measure of success, attain. In this, it merely follows the pattern of genetic programs in general, which do not prescribe sets of alternative routines, but leave open the possibility of adapting given routines for other purposes. (p. 190)
- Bickerton (1981), a pag.190

If there is a language bioprogram, then children are programmed with a set of basic distinctions which they expect that their native tongue will implement somehow. It is less clear whether, or to what extent, they are specifically programmed with the means to realize these distinctions should their native tongue fail to meet their expectations (as in the case, most drastically, if they are born into a pidgin-speaking community). I suspect that the bioprogram may turn as follows: both distinctions and means for implementing them are programmed, but are not necessarily conjoint in the program. We have already claimed that the bioprogram is not present at birth, but unfolds progressively during the course of the first four years or so of life. The distinctions would then be programmed to emerge prior to two, possibly around eighteen months or earlier, while the means of implementation would not necessarily emerge until the third or fourth year. Thus, children would start early searching for means to express the distinction, and only if they failed to find any would they need the implementation part of the bioprogram. (pp. 199-200)
- Bickerton (1981), a pag.199-200

[…] the bioprogram does not correspond directly to superficial similar concepts such as “substantive universals” or (in one of its several senses) “universal grammar.” That is, it does not constitute a body of categories, rules, and structures that are necessarily shared by all languages. Indeed, above the trivial level on which languages have nouns, verbs, oral vowels, etc., I would argue that such a body could not exist. Language systems are wholes, and earlier parts necessarily get mutated to accommodate later parts. (p. 298)
- Bickerton (1981), a pag.298