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Miami–Illinois (endonym: myaamia , [mjɑːmia] ), is an indigenous Algonquian language spoken in the United States, primarily in Illinois , Missouri , Indiana , western Ohio and adjacent areas along the Mississippi River by the Miami and Wea as well as the tribes of the Illinois Confederation , including the Kaskaskia , Peoria , Tamaroa , and possibly Mitchigamea . The Myaamia (Miami) Nation of Oklahoma and the Miami Nation of Indians of the State of Indiana (a nonprofit organization) still practice and use their native heritage to teach young and old so they can keep their traditional language alive.

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77-599: The Illinois River ( Miami-Illinois : Inoka Siipiiwi ) is a principal tributary of the Mississippi River at approximately 273 miles (439 km) in length. Located in the U.S. state of Illinois , the river has a drainage basin of 28,756.6 square miles (74,479 km). The Illinois River begins with the confluence of the Des Plaines and Kankakee rivers in the Chicago metropolitan area , and it generally flows to

154-539: A tautosyllabic /w/ . Obstruents are voiced after nasals. Preaspirated sibilants /hs/ and /hš/ frequently assimilate to geminate /sː/ and /ʃː/ , respectively, especially after front and word-initial vowels. There are a small number of words in the Miami–Illinois language that alternate between /s/ and /ʃ/ in their pronunciations, with /ʃ/ occurring in the place of expected /s/ and vice versa. Both of these alternations seem to occur more commonly before

231-482: A 185-page word list compiled by Antoine-Robert Le Boullenger with about 3,300 items, along with 42 pages of untranslated religious material, and an anonymous 672-page dictionary probably intended as a field lexicon. Despite representing Miami–Illinois as it was spoken more than three centuries ago, these sources are readily intelligible with a knowledge of modern Miami. Probably obtained from the Kaskaskia tribe, among whom

308-472: A book in 2003. The book reconstructs the structure of Miami–Illinois. Many Miami members have described the language as "sleeping" rather than "extinct" since it was not irretrievably lost. The Myaamia Center is a joint venture between the tribe and Miami University . The Center seeks to "deepen Myaamia connections through research, education, and outreach." It is directed by Daryl Baldwin , who taught himself Miami from historic documents and studies held by

385-445: A case of English influence. The process of accentuation (heightened syllable prominence) is independent of the strong syllable rule: weak syllables can be accented, and whereas the strong syllable rule applies from left to right, accentuation applies from right to left. The rules of accentuation are as follows: Like all Algonquian languages, the grammar of Miami–Illinois is highly agglutinative , with particularly complex inflection on

462-573: A comparative lack of contemporary interest in the language, it is difficult to identify the last native speakers of Miami–Illinois in either Indiana or Oklahoma, or the contexts in which the language last saw everyday use. The documentation of the 1950s and 1960s shows a language in the advanced stages of attrition, as seen in Herbert Bussard's notes on the speech of Ross Bundy (possibly the last speaker in Indiana). The grammatical complexity of Bundy's Miami

539-748: A different native language, in a single relatively small area (now Ottawa County, Oklahoma ). English served naturally as the lingua franca of the Quapaw Agency, and minority languages soon underwent attrition . Nonetheless, the Miami–Illinois of this period has left valuable documentation due to the work of trained linguists and ethnographers in the area. Albert Gatschet recorded several examples of connected speech, including mythological narratives, and Truman Michelson elicited grammatical material and stories. These relatively long documents are valuable for reconstructing speech patterns in Miami-Illinois. Due to

616-409: A final /w/ . 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: iihkipisinki 'it is straight' ~ iihkipisinonki 'the place where it (the river) is straight; Peru, Indiana '. The locative case can be extended with the ablative suffix -onci , 'from', and

693-487: A geographic rather than genetic affiliation. A thorough genetic classification of Central Algonquian languages has not yet been achieved, and so Miami–Illinois' closest relatives have not been conclusively established. Lexically, Miami–Illinois most closely resembles the Sauk–Fox–Kickapoo language ; its phonology and morphology, however, are more reminiscent of Ojibwe–Potawatomi–Ottawa . The term Miami–Illinois covers

770-566: A global phenomenon and TV stations from Germany, Brazil, and Japan were interviewing them and taping their monthly meetings in Beardstown. The seeds of scandal were planted in late 1998: a Chicago magazine noticed that the group's returns included the fees the women paid every month. Without them, the returns dwindled to just 9%, underperforming the Dow. An article in The Wall Street Journal led

847-431: A locative noun can also only be understood by context: wiikiaaminki can mean both 'in the house' and 'in the houses'. The regular form of the locative suffix is -enki , with the following common allomorphs: -inki when the suffix falls on a weak vowel (as in wii ki aa m-i 'house'), -onki for stems ending in /Cw/ , and -yonki for most stems ending in /Vw/ . Both of the latter two allomorphs delete

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924-726: A log cabin at the edge of the Illinois River, from which he traded with the local Native Americans and ran a ferry. The town was laid out in 1827 and was incorporated as a city in 1896. During the Black Hawk War in 1832, it was a base of supplies for the Illinois troops. Thomas Beard's son, Edward "Red" Beard , a noted gambler and saloon keeper of the Old West , was killed in a gunfight in Kansas in 1873 by "Rowdy Joe" Lowe . Earlier, he had built

1001-453: A long vowel is always strong, even at the beginning of a word, and resets the meter for all subsequent syllables. Thus a short vowel that immediately follows a long vowel must always be weak, and words beginning with a long vowel are trochaic : ee hsi pa na 'raccoon'. The strong syllable rule is necessary to explain the processes of vowel deletion and devoicing. Initial short (i.e. weak) vowels are frequently deleted in modern Miami, hence

1078-462: 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: ahkwaanteeminki 'at the door', aciyonki 'on the hill', ahkihkonki 'in the bucket'. Locative marking is mutually exclusive with gender and number marking, so the gender and number of

1155-445: A small mussel harvest to provide shells to seed pearl oysters overseas. It is commercially fished downstream of the Rt. 89 bridge at Spring Valley . However, an infestation of invasive Asian Carp has crowded out many game fish in the river. The Illinois River is still an important sports fishing waterway with a good sauger fishery. The Illinois forms part of a modern waterway that connects

1232-515: A two-story brick building which was used for 85 years as a store and inn. This inn is alleged to have sheltered Abraham Lincoln on his visits to Beardstown, but that is legend and unconfirmed. The building was demolished and replaced by a post office. William Henry Herndon , Lincoln's Springfield law partner, claimed that Lincoln contracted syphilis from a prostitute in Beardstown, an incident author Gore Vidal colorfully recounts in his historical novel Lincoln (1984). The Beardstown Courthouse

1309-480: 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: ciimwiki becomes ciimwikia 'sleds'. Historically, the latter descends from verb participles rather than original nouns. The obviative singular ends in -ali . -ooli , or -iili ;

1386-644: Is a city in Cass County , Illinois , United States . The population was 5,951 at the 2020 census . The public schools are in Beardstown Community Unit School District 15 . Beardstown is located on the Illinois River . According to the 2021 census gazetteer files, Beardstown has a total area of 3.65 square miles (9.45 km ), of which 3.62 square miles (9.38 km ) (or 99.21%) is land and 0.03 square miles (0.08 km ) (or 0.79%)

1463-518: Is a major employer and has attracted a substantial immigrant population to Beardstown in recent years. The slaughterhouse and the people employed there were the focus of an economic and urban planning analysis by Faranak Miraftab , an Iranian-American urban scholar and professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign . Her book, Global Heartland: Displaced Labor, Transnational Lives and Local Placemaking , discusses

1540-501: Is extinguished'. This helps to identify long vowels in texts that mark them irregularly or not at all. Weak vowels followed by a preaspirated consonant are devoiced: a la ka hkwi 'his palate' is pronounced [a.la.kḁ.hkwi] . Since short vowels that follow a long vowel are always weak, these will always undergo devoicing before a preaspirate: ma taa ti hswi 'ten' is pronounced [ma.taː.ti̥.hswi] . Voiceless vowels, like vowel length and preaspiration, are transcribed irregularly in

1617-552: Is marked only in the proximate case. The endings of the noun, with common allomorphs, are detailed in the table below. -ooli -iili -inki -onki -yonki -ooki -iiki -ia -oohi -iihi The proximate case is the basic citation form of the noun. It is used to mark either the agent or patient of a verb in sentences with only one expressed noun phrase. Its singular forms regularly end in -a for animate nouns and -i for inanimate nouns. This transparent representation of gender on

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1694-569: Is south of Peoria and Pekin and northwest of Lincoln and Springfield. Near the confluence of the Illinois with the La Moine River , it turns south, flowing roughly parallel to the Mississippi across western Illinois. Macoupin Creek joins the Illinois on the border between Greene and Jersey counties, approximately 15 miles (24 km) upstream from the confluence with the Mississippi River . For

1771-679: Is then joined by the Mackinaw River , and then passes through the Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge . Across from Havana , the Illinois is joined by the Spoon River coming from Fulton County , and across from Browning , it is joined by the Sangamon River , which passes through the state capital, Springfield, Illinois . The La Moine River flows into it approximately five miles (8 km) southwest of Beardstown , which

1848-644: Is typical of a Central Algonquian language, and fairly conservative with regard to Proto-Algonquian . Miami–Illinois distinguishes thirteen consonants: The intervocalic clusters permitted are - hC - and -NC -, where C is a non-glottal obstruent /p t tʃ k s ʃ/ 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

1925-665: Is used in the summer and early fall by tourists in pleasure boats cruising the Great Loop . The Illinois River is an important part of the Great Loop, the circumnavigation of Eastern North America by water. The City of Peoria is developing a long-term plan to reduce combined sewer overflows to the Illinois River, as required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency . During dry weather, sewage flows safely through

2002-409: Is water. Beardstown is located on the Illinois River , which plays an important role in the economy and history of the community, and is the site of two grain terminals where farm products are transferred to barges for transport. Hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation along the river contribute to the local economy. A large pork slaughterhouse, formerly owned by Kraft and Cargill now by JBS ,

2079-726: The Des Plaines and Chicago Rivers and the Kankakee and St. Joseph rivers allowed Native Americans, Europeans, and later Americans access between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi basin . The first European presence in the area was the Jesuit mission founded in 1675 by Father Jacques Marquette on the banks of the Illinois across from Starved Rock at the Grand Village of the Illinois , near present-day Utica. The Illinois Confederation were

2156-479: The Dow Jones and over the course of nine years were claiming returns of 23.4% on their stocks. Once they went public with the amazing returns, they gained national recognition for their success. The Beardstown Ladies, with an average age of 70 (1994), were asked to appear on The Donahue Show , CBS's Morning Show , NBC's The Today Show , and ABC's Good Morning America . For six straight years they were honored by

2233-722: The Great Lakes at Chicago to the Mississippi River. The waterway was originally established by the building of the Illinois and Michigan Canal that connected the Illinois River to the Chicago River . When the Sanitary District of Chicago later reversed the flow of the Chicago River, the pollution and sewage of the city of Chicago flowed down into the Illinois River. The Illinois and Michigan Canal has since been replaced by

2310-661: The Illinois Waterway , including the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal . River traffic and flood control is managed by eight locks and dams operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers . As of 2011, all locks and dams on this waterway are closed to visitors for security reasons, except the Starved Rock Visitor Center, which offers an excellent interpretation of the entire system. The waterway is heavily used by barges transporting bulk goods such as grain and oil. It

2387-589: The Smithsonian's National Anthropological Archives , and has developed educational programs. Baldwin's children were raised as native speakers of Miami. Center staff develop language and culture resources using material that is often from translated missionary documents. Published language and culture resources include: A related project at Miami University concerns ethnobotany , which "pairs Miami-language plant names with elders' descriptions of traditional plant-gathering techniques." The phonology of Miami–Illinois

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2464-407: The allative -iši , 'to, towards'. In locatives derived from full nouns and intransitive animate verbs, these suffixes must follow the locative suffix (e.g. minooteen-ink-onci 'from town'), but most particles can take them without the locative ( alik-onci 'from over there'). The vocative case indicates the person or thing being addressed. It is formed regularly with the suffix -e in

2541-610: The French had set up a mission, these documents doubtless approximate the lingua franca of the Illinois Confederation as a whole. Individual tribes within the Confederation, however, may well have spoken distinct dialects or other languages altogether. The linguistic affinity of the Mitchigamea in particular has been questioned, since Jacques Marquette mentions a Mitchigamea interpreter who understood little Illinois. During

2618-456: The Illinois Confederation and early contact, population decline and relocation to Oklahoma in the 19th century, and language loss leading to extinction in the 20th century. The Miami–Illinois of the first period is recorded primarily by French Catholic missionaries in what is now Illinois, beginning with a collection of prayers, instruction, and catechisms written by Claude-Jean Allouez (possibly with Sébastien Rale 's assistance) in Kaskaskia in

2695-642: The Illinois Confederation had consolidated, and identified simply as "Peoria" or "Kaskaskia". In 1867, these groups left Kansas and entered the Indian Territory to settle in the Quapaw Agency , where they would be joined by the Piankeshaw and Wea simultaneously forced out of Indiana. The tribes subsequently amalgamated to form the modern Peoria tribe . The Miami proper, meanwhile, split in 1847 between those remaining in northern Indiana and those leaving for Kansas;

2772-546: The Illinois River is joined by the Vermilion River , and then it flows west past Peru and Spring Valley . In southeastern Bureau County it turns south at an area known as the "Great Bend", flowing southwest across western Illinois, past Lacon , Henry and downtown Peoria , the chief city on the river. South of Peoria, the Illinois River goes by East Peoria and Creve Coeur and then Pekin in Tazewell County . It

2849-544: The Illinois River was shaped in a matter of days by the Kankakee Torrent . During the melting of the Wisconsin Glacier about 10,000 years ago, a lake formed in present-day Indiana, comparable to one of the modern Great Lakes . The lake formed behind the terminal moraine of a substage of that glacier. Melting ice to the north eventually raised the level of the lake so that it overflowed the moraine. The dam burst , and

2926-580: The Illinois River with a viewing area of the working lock in a site frequented by bald eagles. From 1905 to 1915, more freshwater fish were harvested from the Illinois River than from any other river in the United States except for the Columbia River . The Illinois River was once a major source of mussels for the shell button industry. Overfishing , habitat loss from heavy siltation , and water pollution have eliminated most commercial fishing except for

3003-570: The Miami–Illinois literature; the French missionary sources usually indicate voiceless vowels, but later Anglo-American sources often ignore them, producing illusory consonant clusters foreign to Miami–Illinois phonology. In the Peoria of Oklahoma resident Nancy Stand, recorded briefly in the 1930s by Charles Voegelin , many vowels appear to be reduced to a schwa /ə/ . The contextual rules behind vowel reduction are unclear, and since no other Miami–Illinois text indicates any similar process, it appears to be

3080-506: The Mississippi. South of Hennepin , the Illinois River follows the ancient channel of the Mississippi River. The Illinoian Stage , about 300,000 to 132,000 years ago, blocked the Mississippi near Rock Island , diverting it into its present channel. After the glacier melted, the Illinois River flowed into the ancient channel. The Hennepin Canal roughly follows the ancient channel of the Mississippi upstream of Rock Island. The modern channel of

3157-468: The National Association of Investors Corp's "All-Star Investment Clubs". In 1993, they produced their first home video for investors called, The Beardstown Ladies: Cooking Up Profits on Wall Street . By 1994, they wrote their first book, The Beardstown Ladies' Common-Sense Investment Guide , which sold over 800,000 copies by 1998 and was a New York Times Best Seller . The Beardstown Ladies become

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3234-471: The Proto-Algonquian consonant commonly represented as * /θ/ . Miami–Illinois has four short vowels, /i e a o/ and four long vowels, /iː eː aː oː/ . There is significant allophonic variation in vowel quality. /a/ is usually phonetic [a] , but may be pronounced as [ʌ] by some speakers. /e/ occupies the non-high front range [æ ~ ɛ ~ e] . /i/ occupies the high front space [ɪ~i] . /o/ occupies

3311-630: The River. The river's trade flowed downstream to be dominated by St. Louis . After the I&;M Canal was built, a string of cities, such as LaSalle, Peru, and Ottawa grew along the river, extending Chicago 's influence into the Mississippi Valley. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the residents of the river towns were deeply involved in harvesting the river's fish, waterfowl, mussels , and ice . They were economically and culturally dependent on

3388-441: The canal declined by the early 1900s, it was eventually replaced by the Illinois Waterway in 1933, which is still in use today. The Peoria Riverfront Museum contains a gallery, "Illinois River Encounter," that offers an interpretation of the river through an aquarium tank, and displays of the river's geology, ecology, social history, engineering, and commercial use. The Starved Rock Lock and Dam Visitor Center features exhibits on

3465-407: The city was $ 43,425, and the median income for a family was $ 49,500. Males had a median income of $ 36,764 versus $ 25,108 for females. The per capita income for the city was $ 20,599. About 20.2% of families and 22.4% of the population were below the poverty line , including 25.1% of those under age 18 and 10.0% of those age 65 or over. Beardstown was first settled by Thomas Beard in 1819; he erected

3542-560: The city's sewers to the Greater Peoria Sanitation District wastewater treatment plant . However, about 28 times a year, melting snow or rainwater can overwhelm the sewers, causing untreated sewage to overflow into the Illinois River. Peoria was required to examine the sewer overflows and prepare a long-term control plan to meet Clean Water Act requirements and protect the Illinois River. The city had to submit its plan by December 2008 to U.S. EPA and Illinois EPA. The issue

3619-405: The complex post-contact history of the groups concerned, the dialectology of Miami–Illinois is difficult to reconstruct for any historical period, but by the end of the 19th century dialectal diversity was minimal, being limited to a modest three-way division between Peoria, Miami proper, and Wea. The history of the Miami–Illinois language prior to revitalization can be divided into three periods:

3696-637: The confluence of the Kankakee River and the Des Plaines River in eastern Grundy County , approximately 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Joliet . Its other major tributaries include the Fox, Vermilion, Macoupin, Mackinaw, Spoon, Sangamon, and La Moine. This river flows west across northern Illinois, passing Morris and Ottawa , where it is joined by the Mazon River and Fox River respectively. At LaSalle ,

3773-458: The construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal and the Hennepin Canal in the 19th century, the role of the river as link between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi was extended into the era of modern industrial shipping. The Illinois now forms the basis for the Illinois Waterway , extending the river's capabilities for navigation and commercial shipping. The Illinois River is formed by

3850-523: The early 19th century are the linguistic and ethnographic notes of Charles Trowbridge and an anonymous 42-page Wea Primer written for Protestant missionaries in Kansas in 1837. The first migrations out of the original Miami–Illinois heartland took place at this time. By 1832, there were virtually no Miami–Illinois speakers in Illinois; those who had survived the collapse of the previous decades had emigrated to Kansas via Missouri. The formerly diverse tribes of

3927-623: The economic and political forces that brought emigrants and immigrants to Beardstown. As of the 2020 census there were 5,951 people, 2,155 households, and 1,352 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,631.30 inhabitants per square mile (629.85/km ). There were 2,368 housing units at an average density of 649.12 per square mile (250.63/km ). The racial makeup of the city was 50.56% White , 11.39% African American , 1.71% Native American , 1.51% Asian , 0.49% Pacific Islander , 23.71% from other races , and 10.62% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 40.43% of

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4004-439: The entire volume of the lake was released in a very short time, perhaps a few days. Because of the manner of its formation, the Illinois River runs through a deep canyon with many rock formations. It has an "underutilized channel", one far larger than would be needed to contain any conceivable flow of the modern river. The Illinois River valley has long been an important transportation route for civilizations. The portages between

4081-404: The final /w/ ) in the plural, along with or to the exclusion of regular -waki : mahkwa 'bear' becomes mahkooki 'bears', but eelikwa 'ant' can become either eelikooki or eelikwaki . A handful of nouns, including all nouns ending in -mina 'berry', pluralise with -iiki : ahsapiiki 'nets', kaayominiiki 'gooseberries'. The inanimate proximate plural suffix

4158-466: The first fort in Illinois, Ft. St. Louis, at Starved Rock to facilitate the fur trade and defend the Illinois against the Iroquois . Later the fort was relocated to the present site of Creve Coeur , near Peoria. The French retained a presence in the area, with small trading posts. Prior to the construction of the Illinois & Michigan Canal , completed in 1845, Peoria was the only large settlement on

4235-430: The gender assignment for some can be traced back to Proto-Algonquian. A handful of nouns can take either animate or inanimate gender. Categories with unpredictable internal gender assignments include body parts ( kiloonkwa 'your cheek' but kihkiwani 'your nose') and names for plants. The regular animate proximate plural suffix is -aki . Some nouns ending in -Cwa in the singular end in -ooki (deleting

4312-516: The internationally important wetlands of the Emiquon Complex and Dixon Waterfowl Refuge . The river was important among Native Americans and early French traders as the principal water route connecting the Great Lakes with the Mississippi. The French colonial settlements along these rivers formed the heart of the area known as the Illinois Country in the 17th and 18th centuries. After

4389-471: The language varieties spoken by several different groups throughout history. Illinois denotes specifically the language common to the Illinois Confederation described in 17th- and 18th-century French missionary sources, and the subsequent dialect of the consolidated Peoria tribe; Miami denotes the precontact dialects of the Miami, Wea, and Piankeshaw indigenous to Indiana. Due to the low quality of many records and

4466-457: The last 20 miles (32 km) of its course, the Illinois is separated from the Mississippi River by only about five miles (8 km), by a peninsula of land that makes up Calhoun County . The Illinois joins the Mississippi near Grafton , approximately 25 miles (40 km) northwest of downtown St. Louis and about 20 miles (32 km) upstream from the confluence of the Missouri River and

4543-500: The late 17th century. A much more extensive document – an Illinois-French dictionary of nearly 600 pages and 20,000 entries – was compiled by Jacques Gravier in the early 18th century. Based on an analysis of its handwriting, it appears to have been transcribed by his assistant, Jacques Largillier. Gravier's original dictionary is held by Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut . Two other notable sources from this time period are extant:

4620-714: The late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Miami–Illinois people experienced a rapid population decline due to introduced diseases , depredations by neighboring tribes (especially the Iroquois ), the Northwest Indian War , and subsequent Anglo-American colonisation. In contrast to the French missionary literature, Anglo-American documentation of the language from this period varies widely in both extent and quality. The Miami chief Little Turtle's visit to Philadelphia created some interest in his culture, leading to two word lists of reasonable quality - one apparently commissioned by Thomas Jefferson . The most significant materials of

4697-584: The latter group moved to the Quapaw Agency in the 1870s, but did not assimilate to the Peoria, and are now incorporated as the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma . The Miami who remained in Indiana now identify as the Miami Nation of Indiana , but lack federal recognition as such. The use of the Miami–Illinois language declined precipitously after the migration to Oklahoma because of the concentration of various tribes, each with

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4774-474: The non-low back range [o~ʊ~u] . In this article, strong vowels are marked with bold type where relevant, whereas accented vowels carry an acute accent (e.g. ⟨á⟩ ). 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 "strong". A syllable with

4851-420: The noun sets Miami–Illinois apart from many other Algonquian languages, where deletion of word-final vowels has obscured gender marking. Gender is usually predictable from nature, but some nouns that would be expected to be inanimate are in fact marked as animate: misihkwa 'hail', apikana 'bead'. Many of these unexpectedly animate nouns have a special significance in traditional Miami–Illinois culture, and

4928-452: The obviative plural ends in -ahi , -oohi , or -iihi . The allomorphy here is determined in the same way as the proximate plural; if a noun takes -ooki or -iiki , 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

5005-434: The optional initial vowel of (ah) ci kwi 'stump', (a) hsee ma 'tobacco', (is/ih) pe si wa 'he is tall'. Initial vowel deletion appears to take preaspiration ( -h- ) with it before stops, but not before fricatives, which remain distinct from their simple counterparts (perhaps because of the assimilation of /hs/ and /hš/ to /sː/ and /ʃː/ ). By contrast, initial long vowels are never deleted: aahteeki 'it

5082-399: The population. There were 2,155 households, out of which 37.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.97% were married couples living together, 15.13% had a female householder with no husband present, and 37.26% were non-families. 32.76% of all households were made up of individuals, and 14.80% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size

5159-430: The primary inhabitants of the valley. Marquette wrote of the river, "We have seen nothing like this river that we enter, as regards its fertility of soil, its prairies and woods; its cattle, elk, deer, wildcats, bustards, swans, ducks, parroquets, and even beaver. There are many small lakes and rivers. That on which we sailed is wide, deep, and still, for 65 leagues." In 1680, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle built

5236-404: The river, building up industries such as tourism related to duck hunting and sport fishing, commercial fishing, musseling for the button factories, and ice cutting for early attempts at refrigeration for domestic and commercial use. With the construction of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in the late 19th century, Chicago's sewage was pushed down the river rather than into Lake Michigan. As

5313-420: The singular and -enka in the plural. There are several different patterns that form diminutive nouns in Miami–Illinois. Costa describes the formation of diminutives as "extremely complex - much more irregular than that seen in its closest Algonquian relatives". The most common diminutive suffix is -ns ~ -nehs ~ -nihs , which is followed by the case ending. Beardstown, Illinois Beardstown

5390-402: The southwest across Illinois, until it empties into the Mississippi near Grafton, Illinois . Its drainage basin extends into southeastern Wisconsin , northwestern Indiana , and a very small area of southwestern Michigan in addition to central Illinois. Along its shores are several river ports, including Peoria, Illinois . Historic and recreation areas on the river include Starved Rock , and

5467-429: 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. The locative case marks

5544-468: The verb. Other characteristically Algonquian features are a distinction between animate and inanimate gender on both nouns and verbs and a syntactic category of obviation . First-person forms distinguish clusivity (whether or not the addressee "you" is included in "we"). Miami–Illinois noun inflection distinguishes two genders (animate vs. inanimate), two numbers (singular vs. plural), and four cases (proximate, obviate, locative , and vocative ). Gender

5621-594: The vowel /i/ . One example is apeehsia ~ apeehšia , both meaning 'fawn' (Proto-Algonquian * /apeˑhs-/ ). In the Wea dialect of Miami, the sibilant /s/ was frequently replaced with the interdental fricative [θ ~ ð] . In the Wea Primer (1837), this consonant – written as <f> – is only found in the place of preaspirated /hs/ ; by the time of Gatschet's documentation (1895–1902), it appears to have replaced all instances of /s/ . This segment bears no historical relation to

5698-402: Was 3.18 and the average family size was 2.50. The city's age distribution consisted of 26.9% under the age of 18, 10.0% from 18 to 24, 27.8% from 25 to 44, 22.8% from 45 to 64, and 12.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 33.0 years. For every 100 females, there were 94.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.4 males. The median income for a household in

5775-426: Was significantly reduced and analogised to English in comparison to "standard" (i.e. 19th-century and revitalised) Miami–Illinois. The language as a whole was moribund by the 1930s, and probably no longer natively spoken by the 1970s. The revitalization effort is based on the work of linguist David Costa. Based on his extensive studies, he published The Miami-Illinois Language in 1994 as his Ph.D. dissertation and as

5852-432: Was still under discussion as recently as 2016. The John Hartford song "Long Hot Summer Day" is written from the perspective of a barge worker on the Illinois River. It references the Illinois towns of Pekin, Beardstown, and Alton. Miami-Illinois language Miami–Illinois is an Algonquian language within the larger Algic family . It is usually described as a Central Algonquian language, but that grouping denotes

5929-437: Was the site of a famous trial which helped build Abraham Lincoln 's reputation as a lawyer after he used a copy of a farmer's almanac to undermine the credibility of the prosecution's key witness. The scene was later depicted in a painting by Norman Rockwell . A Lincoln Museum is on the second floor of the courthouse along with many Native American relics. From 1984 to 1993, a group of 16 late-aged women were picking stocks in

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