This unprecedented study seeks to answer some fundamental questions in Creole Studies:

which structural features are shared by all the world's Creoles?
to what extent are the traits typical of Atlantic Creoles also found elsewhere in the world?

This book contains comparative grammars of 18 Creole languages of the Americas, Africa, Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, written by some of the field's leading scholars. There are separate chapters for each language (with the closely relately Creoles of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau being treated together). Each chapter includes a socio-historical introduction as well as a detailed grammar which treats ca. 100 structural features. The descriptive framework is common to all chapters, with corresponding section numbers to allow easy cross-reference.

The book as a whole provides the broadest structural comparison between Creole languages yet undertaken: the data for the next generation of theory. Contributors are: Marlyse Baptista, Dwijen Bhattacharjya, Daniel Chapuis, J Clancy Clements, Chris Corcoran, Michel DeGraff, Nicholas Faraclas, Kate Green, John Holm, Mary Huttar, Cornelia Khamis, Christa de Kleine, Silvia Kouwenberg, Gerardo Lorenzino, Heliana Ribeiro de Mello, Abigail Michel, Jonathan Owens, Peter L Patrick, Salvatore Santoro, Armin Schwegler, Miki Suzuki, and Sorie M Yillah.

The chart below arranges the languages covered in each of the chapters according to their lexifier.