The language of the [[species:Threadwielders]] has a simple and flexible grammar, in that it imposes few rules about the composition of sentences. In combination with the language's tendency to [[language:dictionary|portmanteau]] words and shorten them (see below), this has a tendency to cause ambiguities. For situations where clarity is important, or the ambiguity too great, adherence to the recommended sentence structure, without portmanteaus and abbreviations, is expected. ===== Sentence Structure ===== **NOTE: THIS SECTION IS NOT CANONICAL (yet). REH IS WORKING ON IT.** Declarative sentences have a fairly simple subject-verb-object structure. Most frequently, the subject represents an agent of the verb (i.e., the person or thing //doing// the action), whereas the object tends to represent the patient of the verb (i.e., that which the action is being //done to//). Some verbs are intransitive, and will not take any objects; others may take additional indirect objects. (**@todo: example sentences**) One exception to the above: The verb 'to be' is elided for present tense sentences, so it is entirely possible to create a sentence entirely out of nouns and adjectives. For example, "He is crazy" would translate as //ra khalei//. Aside from the possessive marker '//-i//' mentioned above, cases do not exist -- so //sa// can be used as either "I" or "me", //e// can be used as either "we" or "us", etc. Adjectives and adverbs are generally placed in front of the word they modify; they can also be placed after the modified word, but it is a less-common construction and generally calls greater attention to the modification. For example, //adaryr'is kas̈// would be "nightmare-filled sleep", whereas //kas̈ adaryr'is// would be "sleep that is filled with nightmares". **To be continued; work in progress** {{tag>[minimal]}}