Cena signers vary in word order preferences. In general, word order varies according to the valency of the sentence – the number of arguments a verb takes. As in many other languages, intransitive events are generally subject-first (e.g. a woman runs). For transitive events, word order preferences show sensitivity to the animacy of the object. In transitive events with an inanimate object (e.g. a woman rolls a ball), sentences tend to be subject-object-verb, whilst with animate objects (e.g. a woman pushes a girl) both subject-object-verb and object-subject-verb orders are common. There is little convergence with ditransitive events (e.g. a woman gives a shirt to a man). Verb agreement has been observed in the second and third generation of signers but not the first and oldest generation, although this generation only contains one signer. Nonetheless, word order is not the only strategy employed to mark argument structure. Signers have been observed to repeat the agent of a verb event in code-switches (between Cena and Libras) to mark their role in the event, similarly to how a speaker of a spoken language might use stress. This strategy has not been observed in any other language in the existing literature, and is likely a result of a lack of other stable strategies to mark argument structure (such as verb agreement) due to the language's relative youth. As such, this reveals the various strategies a young language may employ on the pathway to widespread conventionalization. An example of these reiterative code-switches is provided below:
