as in péhñi ('whiskey') and thus appears to be another possible spirant + nasal consonant combination. The stop + semivowel consonant clusters θw, xw, and hw all appear to be restricted to the word medial environment, whereas the stop + semivowel consonant cluster sw appears to be the only stop + semivowel known to show up both word initially, as in swá̃la ('to be soft') and baswá ('to cut piece off'). The stop + liquid phoneme clusters θl, sl, and xl have all been found in the word initial and word medial environments. Cluster metamorphosis and phenomenon An interesting analysis of the Chiwere language has shown that the spirant + stop consonant cluster hg is the more commonly used pronunciation of the spirant + stop cluster θg and that the hg cluster may be replacing the θg altogether. In William Whitman's research, the spirant + stop combination xd, with the one given example used in this journal being iblí̃xdo ('blackbird'), is mentioned as being an error for the spirant + stop combination hd. But the spirant + stop combination xd has also been found in the words chéxdó ('buffalo bull'), náxda ('sour'), and náxdage ('kick'). With this data we can see that the consonant cluster xd is a possible combination and can show up in word medial position. Vowels Chiwere has five oral vowel phonemes, , and three nasal vowel phonemes, . Vowel length is distinctive as well. Grammar Chiwere grammar is agglutinative; its verbal complex is central to the structure of the language. Verbs are formed by addition various affixes to a verb stem, each of which corresponds to a part of speech, such as a preposition, pronoun, case marker and so forth. Concepts such as possession, reflexivity and grammatical number, as well subject-object relation and case (including nine instrumental prefixes) are also expressed via affixing. In this way, large, complete sentences can be formed out of a single complex word. Aside from its complex verbal morphology, Chiwere differs from English in a number of significant ways. There are separate male and female registers, and interrogatives are formed with the question particle je, though this is omitted in informal speech. Finally, Chiwere word order is subject-object-verb, in contrast to English SVO order. Verbal complex The verbal complex is formed of preverbal and postverbal affixes, with preverbal affixes communicating positional, instrumental and pronominal elements. These are added to a verb