language, and educational materials are being developed. One linguist working on this revival is Jonathan Bobaljik. Modern Itelmen has been heavily influenced by Russian lexically, phonologically and grammatically (see below). Phonology Itelmen has a larger phonological inventory than other Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages, and permits complex consonant clusters in some environments. However, Itelmen has a different system of vowel harmony than its relatives Chukchi and Koryak. Volodin (1997) gives the following consonant inventory, shown here with both the Cyrillic and IPA forms. Itelmen is unusual in having a voicing (VOT) distinction in fricatives but not in plosives. In addition to the consonants shown above, some sources also include the glottal stop , as well as glottalised nasal and lateral phonemes, including , , and . 's' and 'z' may be apical post-alveolar fricatives rather than alveolar fricatives. There may also be distinct labialised consonant phonemes. There are five vowel phonemes: and . Schwa () also appears but its phonemic status is unclear. Classification There are two points of view about where Itelmen belongs genetically. According to the first theory, Itelmen and Chukotkan descend from a common proto-language; the sharp differences of Itelmen, noticed at all levels, are explained by the intense influence of other languages. It is suggested that Itelmen absorbed a different non-Chukotko-Kamchatkan language. According to the second theory, Itelmen is not related to other Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages; common elements are due to contact. Initial comparisons of the basic Itelmen lexicon to Chukotkan show that only a third of the word stock is cognate. This result is preliminary due to the incompleteness of Chukotko-Kamchatkan comparative phonetics. Arends et al. (1995) state that Itelmen is a mixed language, with Chukotkan morphology and a lexicon from a separate language, possibly related to Nivkh or Wakashan. Itelmen would thus be a creole of a Chukotko-Kamchatkan language and Nivkh/Wakashan just as Kamchadal became a creole of Itelmen and Russian. However, Fortescue (2005) partially reconstructed the Chukotko-Kamchatkan proto-language. See Kamchatkan languages. External influence on morphology There may be different answers given to the question of which elements of Itelmen are original and which have been brought about by contact with other languages. To take the second hypothesis, Itelmen was at the very beginning an agglutinative language, with word structure (m) + R + (m) (where R is a root and (m) one of several word-changing morphemes), it was nominal, compounds were prohibited; it preserves all of these