Morphosyntax

Word order is usually verb-subject-object but can vary because tone is the most salient indicator of the distinction between subject and object roles. What determines the order in a clause is topicality since the order, in the simplest clauses, can be predicted according to the information structure pattern: [Verb - Most.Topical - Less.Topical]. Thus, if the object is highly topical in the discourse (e.g. a first-person pronoun), and the subject is less topical, the object