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