Now an emeritus professor at the University of Hawaii, Derek Bickerton began teaching literature in Ghana; but, finding it difficult overcoming the barriers between British stories and African culture, he returned to Britain in the mid-1960s for re-training. What attracted him to linguistics? In his own words: For me, the most fascinating things were aspects of my own language that I knew somehow, but knew I had never learned—things that you or I or anyone else wouldn’t even know that they knew unless someone pointed them out. While pursuing this fascination, Bickerton has become involved in a larger debate: nature…