This essay introduces a new featured section, to be published in Small Axe annually, that explores the critical vocabulary of field Caribbean studies.

Gemination in loanwords is a cross-linguistically widespread phenomenon: a singleton consonant in the source word is geminated in the loanword, even if the doubling does not have an orthographic reflex (that is, the geminated consonant is spelt with a single consonant letter in the source word). Source languages which these words are borrowed from do not allow phonetic geminates. Some examples ...

Anaptyxis-prothesis asymmetries, common in loanword adaptation and interlanguage phonology, are characterized by vowel insertion before sibilant + stop clusters, but into obstruent + sonorant clusters. I propose that such patterns reflect an epenthesis strategy in which the site of epenthesis is chosen to maximize perceptual similarity between input and output. Experimental evidence in support ...