Editor Michel DeGraff provides us with a thought-provoking collection of studies thataddress topics involving language acquisition, creole formation, language change, and theconnections between the three phenomena. One of the main goals of the volume is to arrive at abetter understanding of the interaction between the “extraordinary external factors”surrounding the formation of pidgins and creoles and the “ordinary internal factors”involving U(niversal) G(rammar)–constrained language invention (p. 11), a UG-typerepackaging of Thomason's ordinary-processes–extraordinary-results take onlanguage mixture. The underlying theme DeGraff uses to connect the varied contributions is, infact, UG: “This volume is seeking the right ‘version of universalist influenceinterpreted as constraints on the formal structure of creoles, in fact of naturallanguage'” (p. 17). In characterizing the processes of pidginization and creolization,DeGraff chooses a narrow definition, that of the plantation situation (p. 2), thus disregardinginterethnic pidgins and creoles (e.g., Hiri Motu and Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea) and fortcreoles (e.g., many of the Portuguese-based creoles). Although DeGraff does not point this out,he does mention other biases of the book: (a) it focuses only on morphosyntax from a generativeUG-like focus; (b) it largely neglects variationist and quantitative approaches; (c) it does notexplore the connection between UG and all-purpose cognitive structures (except Newport; seebelow); and (d) it considers only a subset of creoles that emerged from contact with Europeancolonizers.