ABSTRACT
verb which themselves signal person and number differences – agree in person and number with nominals that function as grammatical subjects used in referring to agents or objects. Participial forms and other adjectivals, whether attributive or predicative, agree in gender and number with the nominals to which they are complements. The examples also illustrate the most common aspects of Sanskrit word order. What may be called the neutral word order in prose, where metrical constraints are not at play, generally has the verb in last position. However, a sentence does not necessarily have an overt verb: Sanskrit has nominal sentences, in which a third person present form of a verb meaning ‘be’ is not overtly expressed. There are few restrictions on word order that are strictly formal, but the position of certain particles is fixed: particles like vai ‘as is known, truly’, ced ‘if’ occupy second position, as does ca ‘and’ used as a sentence connective. Similarly, the enclitic pronouns ma-, tva-, etc. (Section 2.2.2) are excluded from sentence-initial position. An aspect of overall sentence prosody is worth noting in this context. A sentence
