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Polish Word Order

Basic word order in Polish is SVO, however, as it is a morpheme rich language, it is possible to move words around in the sentence, and to drop the subject, object or even sometimes verb, if they are obvious from context.

These sentences mean more or less the same ("Alice has a cat"), but different shades of meaning are emphasized by selecting different word orders. In increasing order of markedness:

Ala ma kota - Alice has a cat (when spoken with a different sentence tempo and accentation, this sentence can be understood as mildly offensive idiom "Alice is crazy" or "Alice is a loony")
Ala kota ma - Alice does have (own) a cat (and has not borrowed it)
Kota ma Ala - The/a cat is owned by Alice
Ma Ala kota - Alice really does have a cat
Kota Ala ma - It is just the cat that Alice really has
Ma kota Ala - The relationship of Alice to the cat is one of ownership (and not temporary possession)
However, only the first three examples sound natural in Polish, and others should be used for special emphasis only, if at all.

If a question mark is added to the end of those sentences they will all mean "does Alice have a cat?"; an optional 'czy' could be added to the beginning (but native speakers do not always use it).

If apparent from context, the subject, object or even the verb, can be dropped:

Ma kota - can be used if it is obvious who is the person talked about
Ma - short answer for "Czy Ala ma kota?" (as in "Yes, she does")
Ala - answer for "Kto ma kota?" (as in "Alice does")
Kota - answer for "Co ma Ala?" (as in "The cat")
Ala ma - (as in "Alice does [have one]") answer for "Kto z naszych znajomych ma kota?" ("Who among our acquaintances has a cat?")
Note the interrogative particle "czy", which is used to start a yes/no question, much like the French "est-ce que". The particle is not obligatory, and sometimes rising intonation is the only signal of the interrogative character of the sentence: "Ala ma kota?".

There is a tendency in Polish to drop the subject rather than the object as it is uncommon to know the object but not the subject. If the question were "Kto ma kota?" (Who has a/the cat?), the answer should be "Ala" alone, without a verb.

In particular, "ja" (I) and "ty" (you, singular), and their plural equivalents "my" (we) and "wy" (you, plural), are almost always dropped, much like the respective Spanish pronouns.

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