The non-referential or expressive function, on the other hand, is used to express moods or jokes, for example. Pidgins are said to be restricted-use languages, because their speakers use them at the referential level. They only acquire the expressive function when they are creolized . They tend to use no formal marking to indicate that one part of an utterance is subordinate to another. Distinctive marking of relative clauses comes later in the stabilization or expansion phase of the pidgin life cycle, or arises in the process of creolization .
Pidgins use some alternative strategies to relativize clauses, such as the resumptive pronoun .
In creolistics , relexification happens when a pidgin or a creole changes its lexifier language . Depending on the developmental stage at which creolization occurs, different types of repair are necessary before the language can become an adequate first language for a speech community. It may be needed at all levels phonological, syntactic, semantic, stylistic, and pragmatic or only at some levels. This has to do with speakers' control of the varieties ranging over the continuum. Repertoire extension adds another dimension to decreolization because it is more than simple replacement.