Telugu/Sentence

To understand sentence formation, the various parts of a sentence must be understood. A sentence can consist of 4 elements(though it is possible to create sentences with fewer elements); these include a subject, a verb, an object, and an indirect object. A verb is any word that talks about an action(such as "to run"), an occurrence(such as "to happen"), or existence(such as "to be"). A subject is simply the person or thing that is doing the verb. A direct object who or what receives the action. Finally, an indirect object is the person or thing that receives the direct object. For example, take the sentence "Bob threw the ball to Valery". The verb is "to throw" as this is the action that is performed in the sentence. Bob is the subject of the sentence as he is the one doing the throwing. The ball is the direct object as it is what is being thrown. Valery is the indirect object as she is the one receiving the ball.

In Telugu, the sentence structure is very free and there are not many rules about it. However, the most common sentence structure is Subject-Object-Verb(SOV), as opposed to English's sentence structure which is Subject-Verb-Object(SVO)

An example of the SOV sentence structure is "Vāḍu(He, Subject) nannu(Me, Object) koṭṭāḍu(hit, Verb)"(వాడు నన్ను కొట్టాడు). In English with a SVO order, this would be "He hit me".

Keep in mind, while Telugu is most commonly written and spoken with a SOV order, other orders are used and are grammatically correct. Sentence structure is not nearly as important in Telugu as it is in English; the information that English conveys through sentence structure is conveyed through suffixes(explained further in noun and verb sections), thus sentence structure simply adds emphasis, rather than a different meaning.

Also, keep in mind, that Telugu is a pro-drop language, this means that the subject can be left out as the ending of a verb can state who the subject is. This means that a verb can constitute an entire language

Despite this, there are certain rules that must always be abided to in Telugu in regards to word order. These include:

• Adjectives and participles must always come before the noun they describe
• Nouns that possess something must come before the noun that they possess.
• Post-positions must always come after what they modify
• Adverbs must come before the verb or adjective they describe.