Vowels

Lele has five underlying vowels. The mid vowels are lower mid rather than higher mid. All vowels may have long variants.^[2]

Consonants

There are some asymmetries in Lele's consonant inventory.

Nouns

Nouns are grammatically masculine or feminine, but there are no morphological markings of gender on the nouns.^[2]: 55 This distinction is only seen in the agreement system (covert gender). Only a subset of nouns are marked for plural: large animals, kinship terms and a few inanimate objects. Plurals nouns are marked in a variety of ways including a suffix /-e/ or /-we/ and an infix /-a-/.^[2]: 56 There are three nouns that have irregular plural forms: "woman", "hen" and "person".^[2]: 58

There is a grammatical distinction between alienable and inalienable possession in the noun phrase. In inalienable possession, a singular possessor is marked by a suffix on the noun indexing the possessor (possessor agreement suffix). In plural inalienable possession and all alienable, the possessor is indexed by a pronominal word following the noun.^[2]: 61

Verbs

The tense-aspect-mood system includes four verbal forms labeled "past", "future", "nominal" and "imperative". The "past" form normally has a stem-final vowel /i/. The "future" and "nominal" forms both have a stem-final vowel /e/. They are distinguished from each other by a high tone on the first syllable of the "future" form. The imperative form normally has a stem-final vowel /a/ or /u/.^[2]: 44

Some verbs also have a plural form indicated by a suffix /-wi/ or a devoiced initial consonant. The plural form of the verb can indicate the plurality of an action, a plural intransitive subject, or a plural object.^[2]: 124 Verbs can also be modified by adverbs, including a class of ideophones,^[2]: 164 by a "ventive" marker (derived from the verb "come") following the verb, or an "inceptive" marker (derived from the verb "leave") preceding the verb.

Pronouns

The reference system makes a 10-way distinction. Gender is distinguished in second and third person singular pronouns. The first person non-singular pronouns include a dual inclusive form, a plural inclusive form, and a plural exclusive form. The plural inclusive form is a bimorphemic pronoun which combines the first person dual inclusive form with the second person plural form.^[2]: 100

Word order

In a pragmatically neutral sentence, nominal arguments occur in a SVO word order. However, third person subject pronouns usually follow the verb.