Velyan syntax

The syntax of Velyan is characterised by an overwhelming tendency to double marking: verb inflection shows agreement for number and gender with agents, patients, indirect objects, benefactives and addressees, whilst nominals show (a) case endings for nominative, ergative, accusative, and dative case, (as intransitive subject, agent, patient and indirect object object of the verb) and (b) pronominal agreement on possessed nominals; and adjectives and possessor nominals show agreement with their head nominal in gender, number, deixis, indefiniteness and case.

Velyan is also pervasively ergative: agent arguments of the verb are marked with the ergative case, whilst the verb agrees with the agent of the verb (if present); the syntactic pivot is ergative, and conjoined verb phrases must use the antipassive voice if the agent of one is the patient of another.