Word Order

Reminder: Tunisian is pro-drop. You don't need to use personal pronouns at all. Through its inflections, a verb is enough to tell who the subject is.

Very flexible. The default is SVO but VSO is common too, especially for narration and past telling. VOS is also common especially when you didn't initially intend to mention the subject but then went back on your decision, still is grammatically correct and sound.

However if you want to start your sentence with the object (head-final), you need clitic pronouns on your verb that serve as "back-pointers". Eventually you're gonna be allowed OVS and OSV orders

Notice the metathesis? It's because your greedy ahh wanted more word order, now the word doesn't feel comfortable and it rearranged itself

Jk it's an often recurring phenomenon in Tunisian. View Consonant-stacking principle

For more on these clitic pronouns, view the 'Object' row in the chart below

Now all these 5 sentences mean the exact same thing. But the emphasis is fairly distributed on different parts of the sentence (subject, object or verb). That is whichever is at the head of the sentence.

Yes Ik what you're thinking and no. SOV is not permitted, it sounds awkward and confusing.

A quick note on how the back-pointers are going to change, for kteb, per personal pronoun.

Versions of "[PN] wrote it"

VOS can emerge spontaneously when the object is a personal pronoun, ie enclitics. "Leemouni elli ğaaro menni" for instance is VOS

• Leemo: "(they) Blamed"

• -ni: "me"

• elli ğaaro menni: "those who envied me"

VSO occurs very often when you place a time, place or question word in the very front of a sentence. Mimicking a V-2 Germanic pattern.

1. Ꝁouye mşee l el bħar ('My brother went to the beach")

• Lyoum, mşee ꝁouye l el bħar ("Today, my brother went to the beach")

2. El qattouse torqed ("The cat sleeps")

• Fouq et taawle, torqed el qattouse ("On the table, sleep usually the cat")

3. Baabe keen lawwej ĝliik ("Dad was looking for you")

• Men waqteeş keen baabe ylawwej ĝlíe? ("For how long was dad looking for me")

Notice how in the last sentence the subject is sandwiched between the auxiliary and the main verb in the question form (subj+ aux + verb -> question word + aux + subj + verb).

Normally, we prefer placing question words at the end of object-less sentences that use affirmative non-past 'to be'. So those questions are formed as: subj + question_word. ('to be' isn't there as it's ommitted)

1. Eṣ Ṣiin wiin? (lit: "China where?")

When it's other than 'to be', we place question words before the verb

1. El mall waqteeş yħell? (lit: "The mall when opens?")

Chinese does something similar but it's for every question, view Similarities Cross Linguistically and Questions and negation