major and minor. Major syncopation happens in morphemes that are three or more syllables in the middle of the word. This especially happens in light syllables ending in or . Some examples of this are in the words for 'spoon' and 'broom'. The word for 'spoon' would be pronounced , but with major syncopation, it is pronounced . The word for 'broom' would be pronounced , but with the syncopation, it becomes . Note that the last example is a prime example of the light syllable that ends in being syncopated. Minor syncopation tends to be optionally and only seen is specific dialects. Syllable weight is not a factor and instead it depends on if the word begins with or or ends with an or a cluster including such as . An example of this is in the word for 'five', which would be pronounced and is instead pronounced as or . Historical phonological changes Based on his work to reconstruct Powhatan, Siebert was able to compare the changes that the language might have made compared to Proto-Algonquian and Proto-Eastern Algonquian. Here are three of the most basic changes his research pinpointed: All syllabic phonemes are the same in between Proto-Eastern Algonquian and Powhatan and the only change between those two and Proto-Algonquian is that word-initial became an in Powhatan and Proto-Eastern Algonquian. Ex: PA 'it is high' → . Word-final vowels are deleted if they are preceded by a consonant between Proto-Algonquian and Powhatan. Ex: PA 'earthwork' → Powhatan drops the difference between and that is found in Proto-Algonquian. Similarly, PA becomes a in Powhatan, unless it in a word-final position of a particle or inflectional morphemes, where it is deleted. Furthermore PA becomes a . Ex: PA 'duck' → ; PA 'sand' → ; PA 'little dog' → . Grammar Nouns In Powhatan, nouns take inflective affixes depending on their class. There seems affixes only added to third person nouns. These nouns are not only categorized as singular and plural, but also animate and inanimate. For the animate group there are the proximate and obviative classes; the proximate class is for nouns considered more salient, and the obviative class is for nouns considered less salient. This is quite common for Algonquian languages, and strongly reflects the traditional worldview of Powhatan groups, as well as other Algonquian-speaking groups. Diminutives Powhatan has six affixes for naming items diminutively. These affixes