in 'berry', pluralise with : 'nets', 'gooseberries'. The inanimate proximate plural suffix is -a, homophonous with the animate singular; since plural form takes the same gender as its corresponding singular, the number of a gender-ambivalent noun can occasionally be ambiguous. Some inanimate nouns with a -k- in the final syllable are suffixed with -ia instead: becomes 'sleds'. Historically, the latter descends from verb participles rather than original nouns. Obviative The obviative singular ends in . , or ; the obviative plural ends in , , or . The allomorphy here is determined in the same way as the proximate plural; if a noun takes or , it will take the corresponding forms with -oo- or -ii- in the obviative forms. The obviative case is used for the less salient of two nominal arguments in a sentence, which is not necessarily either the subject or object. Explicit role markers are affixed to the verb instead, matching the subject of the verb with the proximate or obviative noun as necessary. Since most sentences only have a single nominal argument - always a proximate - the obviative is a marked case, unlike the absolutive. As in all Algonquian languages, the choice of which arguments to mark as proximate and which to mark as obviative is determined by complex discourse considerations. Locative and vocative cases The locative case marks a noun as characterizing the place at, on, or in which an action occurs. The precise type of position, which is disambiguated by different prepositions in English, is in Miami-Illinois simply assumed from context: 'at the door', 'on the hill', 'in the bucket'. Locative marking is mutually exclusive with gender and number marking, so the gender and number of a locative noun can also only be understood by context: can mean both 'in the house' and 'in the houses'. The regular form of the locative suffix is , with the following common allomorphs: when the suffix falls on a weak vowel (as in 'house'), for stems ending in , and for most stems ending in . Both of the latter two allomorphs delete a final . These rules do not predict all locative case forms, however. Nouns, particles, and intransitive animate verbs can all take the locative. The last is a common way of forming place names: 'it is straight' ~ 'the place where it (the river) is straight; Peru, Indiana'. The locative case can