As a theory of pidginization, the ‘diffusionist’, perhaps better known as the ‘monogeneticist’, position suffers from the defect that it was derived not to account for pidginization at all, but to explain the puzzling similarities that exist in creoles of diverse genetic history in widely separated regions of the world. It did so by positing an Ur-pidgin, reaching back perhaps as far as the medieval Mediterranean lingua franca and relexified as it was disseminated round the globe by sailors.
- Bickerton (1977), a pag.50