(you) are!", that is "How beautiful you are!"). Nominal syntagmas without having a head: Cussu ditzionariu de gregu est prus mannu de su de Efis ("That Greek dictionary is bigger than Efisio's"), Cudda machina est prus manna de sa de Juanne ("That car is bigger than John's"). Extraposition of the lexical head: Imprestami su tou de ditzionariu ("Please lend me your dictionary"). Ancu + subjunctive as a way to express a (malevolent) wish on someone: Ancu ti falet unu lampu! ("May you be struck by lightning!"). Prepositional accusative: Apo bidu a Maria ("I've seen Mary"). Insertion of the affirmative particle ja / giai: Ja m'apo corcau ("I did go to bed"). Use of the same particle to express antiphrastic formulas: Jai ses totu istudiatu, tue! ("You're so well educated!", that is, "You are so ignorant and full of yourself!"). Reflexive use of intransitive verbs: Tziu Pascale si nch'est mortu eris sero ("Uncle Pascal passed away yesterday"), Mi nch'apo dormiu pro una parica de oras ("I've slept for a couple of hours"). Use of àer in reflexive sentences: Si at fertu a s'anca traballende ("He/She injured himself/herself while working"). Combination of the perfective and progressive verb aspect: Est istadu traballende totu sa die ("He/She has been working all day"). Continuous and progressive aspect of the verb, which is meant to indicate an effective situation rather than typical or habitual: Non ti so cumprendende ("I don't understand you"). Relative lack of adverbs: with the exception of some localized words like the Nuorese mescamente ("especially"), as well as some recent loanwords from Italian, all the Sardinian dialects have a number of ways with which to express the meaning conferred to the adverbs by the other Romance languages (e.g. Luchía currit prus a lestru / acoitendi de María, "Lucy runs faster than Mary"). The expression of the deontic modality through a periphrastic form, characterized by the verb "to want" in auxiliary position, a feature also common to Southern Corsican, Sicilian, Moroccan Arabic and Moroccan Berber, in addition to some non-standard varieties of English. (e.g. Su dinare bolet / cheret torradu "money has to be paid back"). The condaghes seem to demonstrate that unlike other Romance languages, Old Sardinian may have had verb-initial word order, with optional topicalization into the beginning of the sentence. While verb-initial word order is also attested in other old Romance languages, such as Old Venetian, Old French, Old Neapolitan, Old