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Subject–verb–object word order

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In linguistic typology, subject–verb–object (SVO) is a sentence structure where the subject comes
first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant
sequence of these elements in unmarked sentences (i.e., sentences in which an unusual word order is
not used for emphasis). English is included in this group. An example is "Sam ate oranges."

SVO is the second-most common order by number of known languages, after SOV. Together, SVO and
SOV account for more than 87% of the world's languages.[1] The label SVO often includes ergative
languages although they do not have nominative subjects.

Order Example Usage Languages

Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Ainu, Amharic, Ancient Greek, Akkadian,

Armenian, Avar, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bambara, Basque, Bengali,
Burmese, Burushaski, Chukchi, Elamite, Hindustani, Hittite, Hopi,
SOV "Sam oranges ate." 45% Hungarian, Itelmen, Japanese, Kabardian, Korean, Kurdish, Latin,
Lhasa Tibetan, Malayalam, Manchu, Mongolian, Navajo, Nepali,
Nivkh, Oromo, Pali, Pashto, Persian, Quechua, Sanskrit, Sinhala,
Tamil, Telugu, Tigrinya, Turkish, Yukaghir

Arabic (modern spoken varieties), Chinese, English, French, Hausa,

Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Kashmiri, Malay, Modern Greek,
SVO "Sam ate oranges." 42%
Portuguese, Spanish, Standard Average European, Swahili, Thai,
Vietnamese
Arabic (modern standard), Berber languages, Biblical Hebrew,
VSO "Ate Sam oranges." 9%
Filipino, Geʽez, Irish, Māori, Scottish Gaelic, Tongan, Welsh

Algonquian languages, Arawakan languages, Austronesian

VOS "Ate oranges Sam." 3% languages, Car, Chumash, Fijian, Malagasy, Mayan languages,
Otomanguean languages, Qʼeqchiʼ, Salishan languages, Terêna

OVS "Oranges ate Sam." 1% Hixkaryana, Urarina

OSV "Oranges Sam ate." 0% Tobati, Warao

Frequency distribution of word order in languages surveyed by Russell S. Tomlin in the 1980s[2][3] ()

Properties
Subject–verb–object languages almost always place relative clauses after the nouns which they modify
and adverbial subordinators before the clause modified, with varieties of Chinese being notable
exceptions.

Although some subject–verb–object languages in West Africa, the best known being Ewe, use
postpositions in noun phrases, the vast majority of them, such as English, have prepositions. Most
subject–verb–object languages place genitives after the noun, but a significant minority, including the

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postpositional SVO languages of West Africa, the Hmong–Mien languages, some Sino-Tibetan
languages, and European languages like Swedish, Danish, Lithuanian and Latvian have prenominal
genitives[4] (as would be expected in an SOV language).

Non-European SVO languages usually have a strong tendency to place adjectives, demonstratives and
numerals after the nouns that they modify, but Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian and Indonesian place
numerals before nouns, as in English. Some linguists have come to view the numeral as the head in
the relationship to fit the rigid right-branching of these languages.[5]

There is a strong tendency, as in English, for main verbs to be preceded by auxiliaries: I am thinking.
He should reconsider.

Language differences and variation

An example of SVO order in English is:

Andy ate cereal.

In an analytic language such as English, subject–verb–object order is relatively inflexible because it

identifies which part of the sentence is the subject and which one is the object. ("The dog bit Andy"
and "Andy bit the dog" mean two completely different things, while, in case of "Bit Andy the dog", it
may be difficult to determine whether it is a complete sentence or a fragment, with "Andy the dog" the
object and an omitted/implied subject.)

The situation is more complex in languages that have no strict order of V and O imposed by their
grammar. e.g. Russian, Finnish, Ukrainian, or Hungarian. Here, the ordering is rather governed by
emphasis.

Russian allows the use of subject, verb, and object in any order and "shuffles" parts to bring up a
slightly different contextual meaning each time. E.g. "любит она его" (loves she him) may be used to
point out "she acts this way because she LOVES him", or "его она любит" (him she loves) is used in
the context "if you pay attention, you'll see that HE is the one she truly loves", or "его любит она"
(him loves she) may appear along the lines "I agree that cat is a disaster, but since my wife adores it
and I adore her...". Regardless of order, it is clear that "его" is the object because it is in the accusative
case.

In Polish, SVO order is basic in an affirmative sentence, and a different order is used to either
emphasize some part of it or to adapt it to a broader context logic. For example, "Roweru ci nie kupię"
(I won't buy you a bicycle), "Od piątej czekam" (I've been waiting since five).[6]

In Turkish, it is normal to use SOV, but SVO may be used sometimes to emphasize the verb. For
example, "John terk etti Mary'yi" (Lit. John/left/Mary: John left Mary) is the answer to the question
"What did John do with Mary?" instead of the regular [SOV] sentence "John Mary'yi terk etti" (Lit.
John/Mary/left).

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German, Dutch, and Kashmiri display the order subject-verb-object in some, especially main clauses,
but really are verb-second languages, not SVO languages in the sense of a word order type.[7] They
have SOV in subordinate clauses, as given in Example 1 below. Example 2 shows the effect of verb
second order: the first element in the clause that comes before the V need not be the subject. In
Kashmiri, the word order in embedded clauses is conditioned by the category of the subordinating
conjunction, as in Example 3.

1. "Er weiß, dass ich jeden Sonntag das Auto wasche."/"Hij weet dat ik elke zondag de auto was."
(German & Dutch respectively: "He knows that I wash the car each Sunday", lit. "He knows that I
each Sunday the car wash".) Cf. the simple sentence "Ich wasche das Auto jeden Sonntag."/ "Ik
was de auto elke zondag.", "I wash the car each Sunday."
2. "Jeden Sonntag wasche ich das Auto."/"Elke zondag was ik de auto." (German & Dutch
respectively: "Each Sunday I wash the car.", lit. "Each Sunday wash I the car."). "Ich wasche das
Auto jeden Sonntag"/"Ik was de auto elke zondag" translates perfectly into English "I wash the car
each Sunday", but preposing the adverbial results in a structure that is different from the English
one.
3. Kashmiri:
mye ees phyikyir
to.me was worry
yithi.ni tsi temyis
lest you to.him
ciThy dyikh
letter will.give
"I was afraid you might give him the letter"

If the embedded clause is introduced by the transparent conjunction zyi the SOV order
changes to SVO. "mye ees phyikyir (zyi) tsi maa dyikh temyis ciThy".[8]

English developed from such a reordering language and still bears traces of this word order, for
example in locative inversion ("In the garden sat a cat.") and some clauses beginning with negative
expressions: "only" ("Only then do we find X."), "not only" ("Not only did he storm away but also
slammed the door."), "under no circumstances" ("under no circumstances are the students allowed to
use a mobile phone"), "never" ("Never have I done that."), "on no account" and the like. In such
cases, do-support is sometimes required, depending on the construction.

See also
Subject–object–verb word order
Object–subject–verb word order
Object–verb–subject word order
Verb–object–subject word order
Verb–subject–object word order
V2 word order

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Category:Subject–verb–object languages

References
1. Crystal, David (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (2nd ed.). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-55967-7.
2. Meyer, Charles F. (2010). Introducing English Linguistics (https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=M
WbrvUiYzSkC&pg=PA36) (Student ed.). Cambridge University Press.
3. Tomlin, Russell S. (1986). Basic Word Order: Functional Principles (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/
13423631). London: Croom Helm. p. 22. ISBN 9780709924999. OCLC 13423631 (https://search.
worldcat.org/oclc/13423631).
4. "Order of Genitive and Noun" (http://wals.info/feature/description/86).
5. Donohue, Mark (2007). "Word order in Austronesian from north to south and west to east" (https://
web.archive.org/web/20190328172606/http://austronesian.linguistics.anu.edu.au/historydownload
s/Donohue_2007_AN%20word%20order.pdf) (PDF). Linguistic Typology. 11 (2): 379.
doi:10.1515/LINGTY.2007.026 (https://doi.org/10.1515%2FLINGTY.2007.026). S2CID 49214413
(https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:49214413). Archived from the original (http://austronesi
an.linguistics.anu.edu.au/historydownloads/Donohue_2007_AN%20word%20order.pdf) (PDF) on
Mar 28, 2019 – via Austronesian linguistics - ANU.
6. Bielec, Dana (2007). Polish, An Essential Grammar. Routledge. p. 272.
7. The typological database WALS treats German as a language without fixed basic order; see
WALS chapter 81 (https://wals.info/chapter/81).
8. Hook, P. E. & Koul, O. N. (1996). Lakshmi, V.S. & Mukherjee, A. (eds.). "Kashmiri as a V-2
language". Word order in Indian languages. Osmania University: Centre of Advanced Study in
Linguistics. p. 102. ISBN 81-85194-42-4.

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