All utterances in Shangkurian are composed of several simple clauses. Each of which contain, at minimum, a subject and verb, but could also include an object if the verb is transitive. Indirect objects and other subordinate clause constructions must be placed in other sentences as described in Chapter 6. As such, the standard discourse structure would be akin to topic-comment structure, in which the most important background information is presented first in order to make further comments on the stated topic.
Topic particle = hlō (ᖝᖤ)
Used in transitive sentences if the topic has not already been defined, or has changed. It is not used in intransitive sentences as the subject of the action is expected to be the topic. Animates are promoted to the far left, and are followed by the llō particle if there are multiple arguments in the animate slot. Inanimates are moved to the focus position (right before the verb), on the most distal place of the animate side of the sentence, and preceded by llō. They are not given the full agency of animates, but are the "least animate" of the animates or the "most animate" of the inanimates.
When a topic is first introduced in a new discourse, the particle llō is added after the topic to separate it from the rest of the sentence. Often the first topic of a discourse is the overall thesis of the speech and should be given extra weight.
Because the language is conceived of having only a series of clauses somewhat glued together, each topic-comment block is it's own "non-stop sentence". Each clause is separated by a connecting particle and proceeds until the speaker stops commenting. The interlocutor can either decide to continue commenting or introduce a new topic at that point. To connect the different clauses together within a given topic, connector particles are placed between the clauses to flow between comments.
At the sentence level, Shangkurian is concerned with the animacy of the agent and patient, as well as with their proximity to the deictic center. As a result, there would not be a sharply defined word order as the subject and object would be ordered based on animacy and proximity rather than their role in the sentence. Each sentence sorts all animate verbal arguments to the left of the main verb and all inanimate arguments to the right. This means that if both arguments of a transitive verb are animate then both the subject and object would occur before the verb resulting in a SOV or OSV word order depending on the arguments' proximity. The order of two arguments of equal animacy would also be coded for proximity, which affects the word order. Within both the animate and inanimate areas of a sentence, every argument must be ordered to have the most proximate argument to the left, moving away from the deictic center as the clause proceeds.
All content words are either animate or inanimate. Each speaker may decide which category any given predicate falls into. It will not affect the meaning of any given utterance, but will convey the speaker's worldview. For example, two speakers are talking about a computer. One decides that it is animate and the other says that it is inanimate. Neither speaker is wrong, but by describing a computer as animate would imply that the computer is an intelligent and powerful object in its own right and should be respected because of its radical rationality and control over most aspects of modern life. On the other hand, if the computer is described as inanimate, the speaker is emphasizing the astonishing level of human intellect and engineering that contributed to its existence, and that its near universal usefulness is a testament to human creativity.
This feature can also be used to display a personal evaluation of the constituents of the discourse. If these same two speakers were referring to a person they passed on the sidewalk that they didn't know, this animate/inanimate distinction might indicate how highly the speakers think of the unknown person. One may say that it is a human, and even though they are not close with the speaker they deserve the same respect as a friend or relative due to their animacy. But it is also possible to call the stranger inanimate to indicate that, even though it is a human, you don't really care about them or they are irrelevant to the discourse.
Animacy is not only used as a way of flavoring the sentence with extra-linguistic meaning, however. By sorting the various verbal arguments into animate and inanimate categories, the way they interact with the verbal complex changes. This importance becomes more apparent in light of the direct-inverse system detailed in chapter 5.
There are six degrees of proximity which are called: the internal proximate, external proximate, second-person medial, third person medial, seen distal, and the unseen distal. These are represented by demonstrative classifiers, which essentially "nominalize" them to a location. This has the affect of converting the word in question to become the head of the clause in which their meaning is featured. See the table below for the distribution of tones for proximity.