Is there a way to tell it to use different syntax for take/drop for databases (like Sybase) that use the "select top X * from foo" syntax rather than "select * from foo limit X"?

Not yet. Currently we try to follow the SQL standard as closely as possible, but some operations like OFFSET/LIMIT provide challenges.

Would be fun to see if we could do some kind of SQL templating where users could supply their own templates.