The majority of the Eyak corpus is narrative, with very little spontaneous conversation (and that only when embedded in the narratives). There is a better understanding therefore of the syntax of Eyak narrative style and performance than of natural speech. The basic word order of Eyak is subject-object-verb, or SOV, as in ""Johnny ’uyAqa’ts’ sALxut’L"" "Johnny shot his (own) hand." Relatively few sentences, however, follow this exact pattern; it is far more common to find SV or OV. The full word order of a transitive sentence is I S O [P V]: