User:Ceige/NotherPIE: Difference between revisions

===Morphology===

$LANG is primarily a mostly head-final left-branching phrase-oriented agglutinating language. Within verb phrases, morphemes tend to follow an OVS order (e.g., 3p.help.1sg = I help them), where objects (which needn't be patients) modify verbs, and verbs modify the subjects (which needn't be agents). Phrases generally follow the order of general information with regards to a relationship between arguments first, and specific information with regards to the relationship last. For example, "I kicked the ball" might be "I the ball kicked" (with "I" (de)nominalised in some fashion). This is due to an overwhelming habit of speakers to think of individuals and objects close to them (metaphorically or physically) first and the specific details pertaining to them later.

However, while word order can be changed to give the impression that something is particularly important, grammaticality is strongly judged based on adherence to a modifiers-first rule, e.g. "the yellow ball", not "the ball yellow" (the latter could still be technically semantically and grammatically correct if "ball" modifies "yellow" and "yellow" is understood to be a "yellow thing", but this would just be confusing).