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Main article: Proto-Piti

This page gives an extensive description of Proto-Piti syntactical features.

Main clause and word order

In its earlier stage, Proto-Piti is a mainly VSO (Verb-Subject-Object) language. This stage is clearly proved by the cliticization phenomenon of the archaic personal pronouns to the verbal form.

liːloṕ oɬ ɬiːro → liːloṕoɬ ɬiːro
see I man → I see the man

wī́roli sopa lī́lopɑt 
the man sees the dog

The quite rich case system allows every other possible word order, but most of them prove to be very marked and infrequently used. The only word order with a clear role and a frequent usage is OSV (Object-Subject-Verbs), which marks the so-called passive construct.

sopa wī́roli lī́lop
the dog is seen by the man

The other elements in the sentence are usually placed in the order “place-manner-cause-time”, although they are basically freer than the main elements. An object in the dative case, when conveying the indirect object, tends to be placed before the direct object of the sentence.

A peculiar feature is the verbal infinitival agreement: when infinitival forms, as nominal forms of the verbs, take a direct object, are regarded as an expression of belonging, and the direct object is declined in the ablative case.

sopašu lī́lopiñɑme ʔī́sow
I do not see the dog.

Moreover, as it can been seen in the example above, when an infinitival form is governed by a modal verb or by the negative verb ʔī́sɑme, the infinitive is always placed before the conjugated modal form.