Trey, you certainly can pare down a sword. You can just remove larger leaves cutting close to the crown, leaving the large rootstock intact. If you uproot it so you can operate on it, reduce the crown perimeter by trimming roots and leaves and replant. If suitably large, you can even divide the rootstock completely into separate plants. Uprooting a big well-established sword is a major disruption to the local substrate, but you can minimize this by cutting through roots as you find them and just leaving them. This should not cause problems as the unsupported roots decompose, but you certainly can remove them if you wish. Reducing and dividing swords is effectively planting new plants. I would help them along with fertilizer tablets.
