the Miami origin story and a companion text; and a compilation of traditional stories from the Miami and Peoria tribes, recorded in the early 20th century when the language's last native speakers were alive. A related project at Miami University concerns ethnobotany, which "pairs Miami-language plant names with elders' descriptions of traditional plant-gathering techniques." Phonology The phonology of Miami-Illinois is typical of a Central Algonquian language, and fairly conservative with regard to Proto-Algonquian. Consonants Miami-Illinois distinguishes thirteen consonants: The intervocalic clusters permitted are -hC- and -NC-, where C is a non-glottal obstruent and N is a homorganic nasal. -hC- clusters are described as "preaspirated". The 18th-century Illinois recorded in the French mission period also permitted intervocalic clusters -sp- and -sk-, but these have merged with -hp- and -hk- in modern Miami. In addition, many consonants and clusters can be followed by a tautosyllabic . Obstruents are voiced after nasals. Preaspirated sibilants and frequently assimilate to geminate and , respectively, especially after front and word-initial vowels. Alternations between and There are a small number of words in the Miami-Illinois language that alternate between and in their pronunciations, with occurring in the place of expected and vice versa. Both of these alternations seem to occur more commonly before the vowel . One example is , both meaning 'fawn' (Proto-Algonquian *). Wea interdental In the Wea dialect of Miami, the sibilant was frequently replaced with the interdental fricative . In the Wea Primer (1837), this consonant – written as <f> – is only found in the place of preaspirated ; by the time of Gatschet's documentation (1895–1902), it appears to have replaced all instances of . This segment bears no historical relation to the Proto-Algonquian consonant commonly represented as *. Vowels Miami-Illinois has four short vowels, and four long vowels, . There is significant allophonic variation in vowel quality. is usually phonetic , but may be pronounced as by some speakers. occupies the non-high front range . occupies the high front space . occupies the non-low back range . Suprasegmental processes In this article, strong vowels are marked with bold type where relevant, whereas accented vowels carry an acute accent (e.g. ). Strong and weak vowels Miami-Illinois prosody is in part determined by the "strong syllable rule", which marks the syllables of an underlying phonological word in an iambic pattern: beginning from the left, odd-numbered short syllables are "weak", while even-numbered syllables are