Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Introduction The creole litmus test and the NCSL challenge -- I Creole exceptionalism -- Introduction to Section I -- Chapter 1 The creole prototype revisited and revised -- Chapter 2 Comparative complexity: What the creolist learns from Cantonese and Kabardian -- Chapter 3 Reconstructing creole: Has "Creole Exceptionalism" been seriously engaged? -- II Creole complexity -- Introduction to Section II -- Chapter 4 Oh, nɔɔ!: Emergent pragmatic marking from a bewilderingly multifunctional word -- Chapter 5 Hither and thither in Saramaccan Creole -- Chapter 6 Complexity hotspot: The copula in Saramaccan -- III Exceptional language change elsewhere -- Introduction to Section III -- Chapter 7 Why does a language undress? The Riau Indonesian problem -- Chapter 8 Affixless in Austronesian: Why Flores is a puzzle and what to do about it -- Chapter 9 A brief for the Celtic hypothesis: English in Box 5? -- References -- Index