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  • Your definitely into something here. I'll have a think. Woul making them or some of the clitics prefixes be plausible? Initial mutation? One last thing, does the distance of the clause-initial pronoun from the verb (which would normally get conjugated) help at all? Commented Nov 2, 2021 at 22:20
  • I'm not sure how to answer your follow-up question. There's some natural language precedent already for some of the features you describe individually (clause-initial pronouns, second-position clitics, mandatory subject pronouns even in the presence of a lexical subject). I don't think the exact combination of features you propose is attested, but that's sort of to be expected as you add consider more features together simultaneously. Commented Nov 3, 2021 at 23:14
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    The broad picture of what you're describing, an SOV language with a rigid structure but a lot of clause-initial grammatical morphemes is, I think, somewhat uncommon. I would recommend poking around WALS for examples of languages, for example SOV languages with clause-initial negation or maybe evidentials that are second-position enclitics. A language with the feature you want will sometimes have a reference grammar available if you search for it. Reference grammars are good sources of inspiration. Commented Nov 3, 2021 at 23:21
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    thats great, thanks very much. I'll brave WALS again Commented Nov 4, 2021 at 2:25
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    You can also combine features. This link combines, for example, the order of object and verb and coding of evidentiality wals.info/combinations/83A_78A#2/18.0/149.4 . Most languages have a feature value for order of object and verb and there aren't many options total so it's a good feature to combine with other things (order of adposition and noun also has lots of data). Commented Nov 4, 2021 at 2:29