Kah is a very flexible language when it comes to word order. Word order can be adapted according to personal intuition without losing it's power of expression. Rather, the way things are dislocated really says a lot about the nuances the speaker intends. This translates to a basic very simple word order that is very sensitive for topicalization, where dislocation of words means they get extra weight within the sentence.
Verbs are surrounded by their arguments in Kah. It is an SVO-language, meaning that the subject precedes the verb and its object(s) follows it:
Malikah koyun kaiko
Malika read book
Malika read the book
Ester nenju shuki
esther like candy
Esther likes candy
Karim pau mea apa
Karim give sister money
Karim gave his sister the money
In unmarked word order, the head of a noun phrase precedes all of its modifiers:
sunda saska
bike blue
blue bike
lanki wau
rice this
this rice
ado wan jom ye
house big five that
those five big houses
Oblique phrases (mostly expressing time and location) may both precede or follow the verb phrase:
Pitah jam zemanta
Peter do tomorrow
Peter will do it tomorrow
zemanta Pitah jam
tomorrow Peter do
tomorrow Peter will do it
om jara lau
opt put here
let's put it over here
ze fito denu soza binso
after game go drink beer
after the game we'll drink beer
Now, things get interesting when a speaker for some reason does not use the standard word order. While doing this, he'll assign some kind of hierarchy to certain constituent within the sentence. This is called topicalization, which basicly is nothing more than placing the things you want to say most in front of the sentence. Compare:
Jan nenju Merih
John love Mary
John loves Mary
Merih Jan nenju
mary john love
it is Mary that John loves
When grammatical roles might get unclear from the shift in word order, the topic marker be is placed directly behind the dislocated element in the sentence:
Merih be Jan nenju
mary top john love
it is Mary that John loves
binki be paza wana
bread top buy woman
it is bread that the woman bought
Finally, there is a focus marker lo in order to highlight words when they occur in normal, unmarked word order:
Jan lo nenju Merih
John foc love mary
it is John who loves Mary
wana paza binki lo
woman buy bread foc
it is bread the woman bought
In order to understand the difference between topic and focus, please note the subtle difference in meaning in the following sentences:
-topic -focus | wana paza binki woman buy bread the woman bought bread
|
-topic +focus | wana lo paza binki woman foc buy bread it is the woman who bought bread
|
-topic +focus | wana paza binki lo woman buy bread foc it is bread the woman bought
|
+topic -focus | binki be wana paza bread top woman buy it is bread the women bought |
When modifyers are topicalized, their relationship with the head noun changes as well in terms of meaning. When a stative verb precedes a noun, the attributive nature of this verb shift towards a more predicative meaning:
titingo yam chador be red red chador nia gele car fast fast car | yam titingo be red chador the chador is red gele nia fast car the car is fast |