Derek Bickerton

“English has a single verb "to be," which occurs in a variety of contexts. The Guyanese have three verbs for the same set of functions. Or rather two verbs plus what we linguists call a "zero form," a verb that is "not phonologically realized" and looks to the layman like nothing at all:

I am hungry = me hongry.
The boy is laze = di bai lazy.

This is typically what happens when the predicate is an adjective. If it's a noun, you get yet another a:

I am captain = me a kyapn.

However, if the predicate is an expression indicating location, de must be used:

I am in Georgetown = me de a Jarjtong.

If there is no predicate (as in Descartes' "I think, therefore I am") then the meaning must be the same as "exist," and again de is used:

God is/exists - Gad de.”
― Derek Bickerton, Bastard Tongues: A Trail-Blazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World's Lowliest Languages

“History's mostly written by white folk. It's not so much that they're racist as it is that they naturally tend to see things through the spectacles of their own culture, and it requires a constant effort to get past this.

The history of language is no exception. Accordingly, when people think about pidgins they immediately think of Pidgin English, Pidgin French, Pidgin of some European language or other. The idea of the big white guy on top, and all the little nonwhite guys under him struggling to cope with the sophisticated complexities of his language, is so firmly fixed in our minds that the idea of a pidgin based on a language of nonwhites, clumsily and haltingly spoken by members of the master race, seems almost inconceivable.”
― Derek Bickerton, Bastard Tongues: A Trail-Blazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World's Lowliest Languages