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In the Catalan language, sentences consist of a collection of noun phrases grouped around a verb. One of these noun phrases has the syntactic function of subject while the others function as complements , or adverbials. The sentence can be introduced by a 'frame'.
The main features of the sentence are the agreement in person and number between the subject and the verb - which marks the relation between the speaker, on the one hand, and his or her interlocutors and any other people, on the other - and time, which situates the action in relation to the present of the speaker or in relation to the time of the other sentences of the text or discourse. In attributive sentences , as well as agreement in person and number between the subject and the verb, there is also agreement of gender and number between the subject and the head of the attribute when it is a noun or an adjective.
In Catalan there are four main types of sentence:
The neutral order of sentences is shown by the examples for each of the above types: subject, verb for type 1; subject, verb and attribute for type 2; no subject for type 3 and verb followed by a noun phrase for type 4. In general, however, Catalan is an SVO language.