The script used for Oneida writing was developed by French missionaries, but writing by Oneida individuals is extant only from relatively recent years and is nearly exclusively in English. Prior writings about Oneida language and people recorded oral narratives, and even these accounts dropped off about 1930. It is only since the 1980s that the Oneida themselves have employed writing, in any language, at least in a public context, and much of this stems from the legal battles of the Nation. The Creation Story by Elm & Antone is the only book written in Oneida in major publication, and much of the scholarship underlying this work, while certainly in collaboration with Oneida speakers, was done in English. Structure Phonology There are four oral vowels, , and two nasal vowels, (written ) and (written ). Vowel length is indicated with a following colon, . Like other Iroquois languages, Oneida has a relatively limited inventory of vowels and a fairly standard set of consonants, though it is exceptional for lacking bilabial consonants. According to Gick, "all consonants sound similar to English" with a few exceptions involving fricatives and the glottal stop. Oneida lacks bilabial stops and labiodental fricatives. Oneida syllables are largely CV, and VV appears in disyllabic sequences ai, ae, ao, and au. Consonants can also cluster in particular arrangements up to CCCCC in the word-medial position; word-initial or word-final clusters are limited to CCC. Oneida generally accents on the penultimate syllable, and shares with Mohawk the "PLI rules that ... lengthen an accented open penult". Basic register tone results from the Oneida accent system but is not contrastive. Morphology Oneida is polysynthetic and has substantial noun incorporation. Affixes are both prefixing and suffixing depending on precise usage. Verbs take three aspects: habitual, punctual, and stative, which are marked via suffixing. Modal prefixes (future, factual, and optative) fill the role of verb tense; non-modal prefixes are often adpositional. Oneida is head-marking, and designates person and number in this way. These so-called "patient prefixes" take singular, dual, or plural forms to mark the inclusive-exclusive distinction. There is also evidence of "multiple feminine genders" in Oneida. These are referred to as "feminine-zoic and "feminine-indefinite". These feminine genders are differentiated in a number of ways, such as by "indefiniteness, animacy, humanness, size and gracefulness, age, and special relationships" to and or of the woman herself. However, their uses can be controversial and are used