Word Order

When I put this language together, I wanted something that felt highly organized but still completely natural to speak once you get the hang of it. In summary, it is very similar to (and heavily inspired by) SOV languages. Yes, the pronouns might have a billion inflections, but the rest of a sentence is very rigid yet very easy to spin your own way! While it is structurally rigid, it can shift dramatically when you want to focus on something niche.

When you start a sentence, you begin in the Subject Zone, which has five distinct slots designed to anchor, emphasize, and modify the Absolute Subject at Slot A.0. The Absolute Subject is the core of this whole zone. It must be a noun, pronoun, interjection, or interrogative, and you can never precede it with an adjectival verb. A pronoun here can be possessed, as long as it makes logical sense—obviously, 1st person cannot own 1st person, 2nd person cannot own 2nd person, and so on. Interrogatives just ignore all the remaining Subject slots, since you can't really describe, possess, or own an interrogative. If you have a sentence with multiple subjects, each subject says the information it has attached up to the point of the conjunction that links it to the next one, which is most likely ko. If both subjects are possessed or owned, both have to keep their respective pronouns, even if they share the exact same one.

Now, if the Absolute Subject—regardless of whether it’s an item, interrogative, pronoun, or any other part of speech—is being sought for by any of my Necessity Class Words (NCWs), mazu MUST occur right here in Slot A.1. No sooner, no later. Mazu doesn't interfere with how the rest of the slots happen; it's simply a matter of whether there is or isn't mazu. It can only be mazu, and it cannot be shortened to ma, because the Absolute Subject absolutely must come first.

Modifying the subject introduces a precise game of grammatical dominoes. If there are any nominalized or adjectivalized verbs—what I call Nomad Verbs—that modify the Absolute Subject, they go into Slot A.2. This slot is always preceded by the word jī, and you CANNOT omit it or the meaning is completely lost. If the subject is in a state of possession, jī is omitted (unless you used an adjectival verb in Slot A.2) and Sa, Ve, Ke, or To comes right after the Absolute Subject. If you're using a Subject Ownership Pronoun (Sano, Vezo, Kāmo, Tōþo), this slot is forfeit. Just like with the possessive slot, if the Absolute Subject was previously described by a Nomad in Slot A.2 and Slot A.3 is empty, the word ne separates the adjectival verb and the ownership pronoun. You CANNOT omit ne here either, or the meaning is lost. Otherwise, jī and ne are both omitted if no subject-modifying adjectival verb is used. Finally, Slot A.5 is for time and space-defining words. Any non-verb that tells you when or where something happens goes here. These words aren't independent subjects, just the spot where time-based information sits. However, if any of these words are meant to be the object of the sentence, you have to move them to their respective place in the Object Zone instead. I use words like kara, lyvāma, and kūrāma here.

Once you cross into the Object Zone, everything centers around the Absolute Object at Slot B.0, which must be a noun or pronoun. If it's possessed, you add the possessive pronoun before the object. If it's owned, you add the ownership pronoun after it. It doesn't have to be the very first word of the Object Zone, since possessive pronouns, ownership pronouns, or the gatekeeper particle ma can precede it. If the object is sought-for and also possessed, ma comes before the possessive pronoun; alternatively, you can move ma directly after the Absolute Object, though I'll admit this second option is stylistically odd, but it is fully safe for you to use. If you have multiple objects, each object is presented in its entirety, and then we add ko, which introduces our next object cluster. There's no explicit rule for which object is the primary one; you just determine that contextually.

Descriptive qualities are mapped out with mathematical precision around the object. Size, state, and color always march in the Pre-Noun Zone, while formalizers and numerical values sit in the Post-Noun Zone. When you use lōnxe to describe something alongside alo, they combine into lōnxalo. If alo isn't present and lōnxe sits directly next to the described noun, you are forced to add it directly to the noun as the suffix -lo. This suffix crushes all vowels except o, a, and u. The exception is that any vowels after nx, nge, or ngē don't get crushed, and the crushing is completely blocked if attaching -lo would force it to land on one of my banned consonant ending letters: þ, H, J, R, T, K, or W. If a specific numerical quantity describes the noun, we add jī in the Post-Noun Zone to formalize its relationship to the object, followed by the slot reserved strictly for numbers. If it isn't a number, it should have been added earlier.

I also made a major rule for transitions between these zones: if the final word of the Subject Zone is a pronoun (not counting the possessive/ownership pronouns) and the first word of the Object Zone is also a pronoun, you are required to add zu between them. This only applies if the subject is actively interacting via the verb with the Object Zone's pronoun. Honestly, adding zu here isn't a big crime if you do it wrong, because even I do this sometimes! Alternatively, if you want to leave the object entirely vague, you can omit the physical Object Zone completely and address it directly on the verb acting upon it using the enclitic 'nās.

Unlike the other zones, I didn't give the Verb Zone an easily defined order. This zone is strictly for verbs, so you can't possess or own them, and no verb conjugates. The best way I can describe the order of verbs is that the first action is the first in the zone—it just comes down to which appears first in the sentence. However, my Necessity Class Words (NCWs) always sit at the very final position. These NCWs completely rule out using the verbs sabán, tabó, or chambyo in that clause. Additionally, those three listed verbs are always the absolute final verb of a sentence when an NCW isn't overriding them. Another important note is that the NCWs can seek a verb, applying the Sought-For Rule to the actions themselves.

The language functions beautifully like this, but I did build in one aggressive exception. If the object is an interrogative pronoun like San or Chūm, it must be placed at the absolute beginning of the sentence to establish focus. This violently overrides standard syntax and shifts the whole layout to OSV. When this happens, these interrogative objects aggressively lock their structural cluster, meaning they can never be possessed, owned, or modified. Ultimately, I wanted a syntax where every piece of information has a definitive, unyielding home, but with just enough stylistic flexibility to keep it alive.