Creoles have traditionally been distinguished from another group of new language varieties called pidgins, which also developed out of contacts between Europeans and non-Europeans outside Europe. Creole may not have applied widely to language until the late 18th century. Whether a new contact-based variety is called a creole, a pidgin, or an indigenized variety is largely correlated with the colonization style, the particular variety that the ‘creators’ of the new varieties were exposed to, and the mode of transmission (naturalistic versus scholastic), as explained in Mufwene (2001). Among the most central questions of creolistics is that of ‘genesis’, which paradoxically has to do less with their origins than with how they developed. What particular restructuring processes produced creoles? Are there any that are specific to them? The following hypotheses are the major ones competing today: the substrate, the superstrate, and the language universal(s) hypotheses. There is much more literature on the development, sociology, and morphosyntax of these language varieties than on their phonologies, semantics, and pragmatics. With the exception of time reference and nominal number, studies in the latter two subfields are scant. Although lack of consensus among creolists may be invoked as a general reason for this failure to influence general linguistics, alarming indifference from theoretical linguists, especially those engaged in theories of typology and universals, is a more important reason. Consensus cannot be expected of creolistics any more than of other subfields of linguistics. However, in the broader context of language contact (including second-language acquisition), studies of especially creole genesis have been inspiring. For instance, Thomas & Kaufman (1988) is widely cited in studies of indigenized Englishes. Andersen (1983), whose example is well followed by Kouwenberg & Patrick (2003), was an important step to consolidate common interests between second-language acquisition and creole genesis. More cross-fertilization might be expected between studies of ‘creole genesis’ and those of (child) language development, as among diverse subfields of linguistics.