The various forms of language known as pidginized, jargonized, creolized, decreolized, etc., lie at different points along a continuum of linguistic development, of which the initial stage is represented by pidginization. The process that converts pidginized varieties of language into full languages is a different process, even if the end result is sometimes called a pidgin […].
- Ferguson-DeBose (1977), Pag. 113

We see pidginization as a process that accepts normal language as input and produces a reduced, hybridized, and unstable variety of language as output, identified as broken language when used by non-native speakers and foreigner talk when used by native speakers, and identified as pidgin when viewed as the linguistic output of verbal interaction between native speakers and foreigners in some particular contact situation.
- Ferguson-DeBose (1977), Pag. 117

Even in the case of unrelated languages […] if the contact situation is characterized by a relatively high ratio of native target-language speakers to non-native speakers, and by interaction in a wide range of communication situations, any pidginization that occurs will tend to be brief and transient as reduced idiolects rapidly and regularly develop into normal, foreigner-accented varieties of the target language.
- Ferguson-DeBose (1977), Pag. 118