Editing Tewa language (section)

== Syntax ==
=== Word order ===
Tewa sentences follow subject-object-verb order, however there are simple sentences in Tewa such as "{{lang|tew|handiriho gi-c'u}}" (that's how we got in) which are simply a subject and a predicate.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Naranjo |first1=George |last2=Naranjo |first2=Christine |last3=Curran |first3=Mary |last4=Speirs |first4=Randall |year=1960 |title=Tewa text |journal=Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session |volume=4 |article-number=4 |doi=10.31356/silwp.vol04.04}}</ref>

There are also many ways to say what would be translated as the same thing in English in Tewa. For example, there are three ways to say the sentence "The man and the woman are entering":{{Citation needed|date=November 2023}}

{{interlinear|number=1.|abbreviations=ASSOC:associative
| sen-ná-dí       kwiyó     da-cu:de-ʔeʔe
| man-EMPH-ASSOC  woman    3:DU:STAT-enter:come
|}}

{{interlinear|number=2.|abbreviations=ASSOC:associative
| sen-ná-dí        kwiyo-wá-dí       da-cu:de-ʔeʔe
| man-EMPH-ASSOC   woman-EMPH-ASSOC  3:DU:STAT-enter:come
|}}

{{interlinear|number=3.|abbreviations=ASSOC:associative
| sen    kwiyo-wá-dí       da-cu:de-ʔeʔe
| man    woman-EMPH-ASSOC  3:DU:STAT-enter:come
|}}

=== Noun hierarchy ===
Tewa has a noun hierarchy in order to determine which noun phrase goes in which position, however this only influences passive sentences. In Tewa, this is a simple binary distinction between animate and nonanimate noun phrases. 

However, unlike in other languages with a noun hierarchy, such as Navajo, Tewa also marks the subject with the postposition -dí, meaning that there is not a concrete need to adhere to the noun hierarchy as that information is already morphologically encoded into sentences. Because of this, younger Tewa speakers tend to not use the noun hierarchy and instead rely on the morphology present in passive sentences.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kroskrity |first=Paul V. |year=1978 |title=Aspects of Syntactic and Semantic Variation within the Arizona Tewa Speech Community |journal=Anthropological Linguistics |volume=20 |number=6 |pages=235–257 |jstor=30027410}}</ref>

=== Grammatical number ===
Tewa, like other Tanoan languages, has a trepartite [[Grammatical number|number system]], which means that nouns can be counted through different syntactic constructions in three ways. In English, with morphosyntactic differences exist only for two numbers: singular and [[plural]]. Tewa, on the other hand differentiates between singular, [[Dual (grammatical number)|dual]], and plural nouns. 

However, Tewa also appears to group its nouns into two categories: those of "sets" and "entities", with sets being marked by the affix /-n/ and entities the lack of said affix. Because of this, when creating plurality out of an entity, the affix /-n/ must be removed and the base root will be one not seen outside of plurality or duality.

Tewa also has what is called "inverse" numbering, which is a feature of many Tanoan languages. A chart of the indefinite articles for "a, some" can help show this phenomenon: 

{| class="wikitable"
!
!Singular
!Dual
!Plural
|- align="center"
!Class I
|wí
|wên
|wên
|- align="center"
!Class II
|wên
|wên
|wí
|- align="center"
!Class III
|wí
|wên
|wí
|}

As seen, that which marks singular for one class marks plural for another class and vice versa.