Free word order language

In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic sub-domains are also of interest. The primary word orders that are of interest are

• the constituent order of a clause, namely the relative order of subject, object, and verb;
• the order of modifiers (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, possessives, and adjuncts) in a noun phrase;
• the order of adverbials.

Some languages use relatively fixed word order, often relying on the order of constituents to convey grammatical information. Other languages—often those that convey grammatical information through inflection—allow more flexible word order, which can be used to encode pragmatic information, such as topicalisation or focus. However, even languages with flexible word order have a preferred or basic word order,^[1] with other word orders considered «marked».^[2]

Constituent word order is defined in terms of a finite verb (V) in combination with two arguments, namely the subject (S), and object (O).^[3][4][5][6] Subject and object are here understood to be nouns, since pronouns often tend to display different word order properties.^[7][8] Thus, a transitive sentence has six logically possible basic word orders:

• about half of the world’s languages deploy subject–object–verb order (SOV);
• about one-third of the world’s languages deploy subject–verb–object order (SVO);
• a smaller fraction of languages deploy verb–subject–object (VSO) order;
• the remaining three arrangements are rarer: verb–object–subject (VOS) is slightly more common than object–verb–subject (OVS), and object–subject–verb (OSV) is the rarest by a significant margin.^[9]

Constituent word orders[edit]

These are all possible word orders for the subject, object, and verb in the order of most common to rarest (the examples use «she» as the subject, «loves» as the verb, and «him» as the object):

• SOV is the order used by the largest number of distinct languages; languages using it include Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Turkish, the Indo-Aryan languages and the Dravidian languages. Some, like Persian, Latin and Quechua, have SOV normal word order but conform less to the general tendencies of other such languages. A sentence glossing as «She him loves» would be grammatically correct in these languages.
• SVO languages include English, Spanish, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian,^[10] the Chinese languages and Swahili, among others. «She loves him.»
• VSO languages include Classical Arabic, Biblical Hebrew, the Insular Celtic languages, and Hawaiian. «Loves she him.»
• VOS languages include Fijian and Malagasy. «Loves him she.»
• OVS languages include Hixkaryana. «Him loves she.»
• OSV languages include Xavante and Warao. «Him she loves.»

Sometimes patterns are more complex: some Germanic languages have SOV in subordinate clauses, but V2 word order in main clauses, SVO word order being the most common. Using the guidelines above, the unmarked word order is then SVO.

Many synthetic languages such as Latin, Greek, Persian, Romanian, Assyrian, Assamese, Russian, Turkish, Korean, Japanese, Finnish, Arabic and Basque have no strict word order; rather, the sentence structure is highly flexible and reflects the pragmatics of the utterance. However, also in languages of this kind there is usually a pragmatically neutral constituent order that is most commonly encountered in each language.

Topic-prominent languages organize sentences to emphasize their topic–comment structure. Nonetheless, there is often a preferred order; in Latin and Turkish, SOV is the most frequent outside of poetry, and in Finnish SVO is both the most frequent and obligatory when case marking fails to disambiguate argument roles. Just as languages may have different word orders in different contexts, so may they have both fixed and free word orders. For example, Russian has a relatively fixed SVO word order in transitive clauses, but a much freer SV / VS order in intransitive clauses.^{[citation needed]} Cases like this can be addressed by encoding transitive and intransitive clauses separately, with the symbol «S» being restricted to the argument of an intransitive clause, and «A» for the actor/agent of a transitive clause. («O» for object may be replaced with «P» for «patient» as well.) Thus, Russian is fixed AVO but flexible SV/VS. In such an approach, the description of word order extends more easily to languages that do not meet the criteria in the preceding section. For example, Mayan languages have been described with the rather uncommon VOS word order. However, they are ergative–absolutive languages, and the more specific word order is intransitive VS, transitive VOA, where the S and O arguments both trigger the same type of agreement on the verb. Indeed, many languages that some thought had a VOS word order turn out to be ergative like Mayan.

Distribution of word order types[edit]

Every language falls under one of the six word order types; the unfixed type is somewhat disputed in the community, as the languages where it occurs have one of the dominant word orders but every word order type is grammatically correct.

The table below displays the word order surveyed by Dryer. The 2005 study^[11] surveyed 1228 languages, and the updated 2013 study^[8] investigated 1377 languages. Percentage was not reported in his studies.

Word Order	Number (2005)	Percentage (2005)	Number (2013)	Percentage (2013)
SOV	497	40.5%	565	41.0%
SVO	435	35.4%	488	35.4%
VSO	85	6.9%	95	6.9%
VOS	26	2.1%	25	1.8%
OVS	9	0.7%	11	0.8%
OSV	4	0.3%	4	0.3%
Unfixed	172	14.0%	189	13.7%

Hammarström (2016)^[12] calculated the constituent orders of 5252 languages in two ways. His first method, counting languages directly, yielded results similar to Dryer’s studies, indicating both SOV and SVO have almost equal distribution. However, when stratified by language families, the distribution showed that the majority of the families had SOV structure, meaning that a small number of families contain SVO structure.

Word Order	No. of Languages	Percentage	No. of Families	Percentage[a]
SOV	2275	43.3%	239	56.6%
SVO	2117	40.3%	55	13.0%
VSO	503	9.5%	27	6.3%
VOS	174	3.3%	15	3.5%
OVS	40	0.7%	3	0.7%
OSV	19	0.3%	1	0.2%
Unfixed	124	2.3%	26	6.1%

Functions of constituent word order[edit]

Fixed word order is one out of many ways to ease the processing of sentence semantics and reducing ambiguity. One method of making the speech stream less open to ambiguity (complete removal of ambiguity is probably impossible) is a fixed order of arguments and other sentence constituents. This works because speech is inherently linear. Another method is to label the constituents in some way, for example with case marking, agreement, or another marker. Fixed word order reduces expressiveness but added marking increases information load in the speech stream, and for these reasons strict word order seldom occurs together with strict morphological marking, one counter-example being Persian.^[1]

Observing discourse patterns, it is found that previously given information (topic) tends to precede new information (comment). Furthermore, acting participants (especially humans) are more likely to be talked about (to be topic) than things simply undergoing actions (like oranges being eaten). If acting participants are often topical, and topic tends to be expressed early in the sentence, this entails that acting participants have a tendency to be expressed early in the sentence. This tendency can then grammaticalize to a privileged position in the sentence, the subject.

The mentioned functions of word order can be seen to affect the frequencies of the various word order patterns: The vast majority of languages have an order in which S precedes O and V. Whether V precedes O or O precedes V, however, has been shown to be a very telling difference with wide consequences on phrasal word orders.^[13]

Semantics of word order[edit]

In many languages, standard word order can be subverted in order to form questions or as a means of emphasis. In languages such as O’odham and Hungarian, which are discussed below, almost all possible permutations of a sentence are grammatical, but not all of them are used.^[14] In languages such as English and German, word order is used as a means of turning declarative into interrogative sentences:

A: ‘Wen liebt Kate?’ / ‘Kate liebt wen?’ [Whom does Kate love? / Kate loves whom?] (OVS/SVO)

B: ‘Sie liebt Mark’ / ‘Mark ist der, den sie liebt’ [She loves Mark / It is Mark whom she loves.] (SVO/OSV)

C: ‘Liebt Kate Mark?’ [Does Kate love Mark?] (VSO)

In (A), the first sentence shows the word order used for wh-questions in English and German. The second sentence is an echo question; it would only be uttered after receiving an unsatisfactory or confusing answer to a question. One could replace the word wen [whom] (which indicates that this sentence is a question) with an identifier such as Mark: ‘Kate liebt Mark?’ [Kate loves Mark?]. In that case, since no change in word order occurs, it is only by means of stress and tone that we are able to identify the sentence as a question.

In (B), the first sentence is declarative and provides an answer to the first question in (A). The second sentence emphasizes that Kate does indeed love Mark, and not whomever else we might have assumed her to love. However, a sentence this verbose is unlikely to occur in everyday speech (or even in written language), be it in English or in German. Instead, one would most likely answer the echo question in (A) simply by restating: Mark!. This is the same for both languages.

In yes–no questions such as (C), English and German use subject-verb inversion. But, whereas English relies on do-support to form questions from verbs other than auxiliaries, German has no such restriction and uses inversion to form questions, even from lexical verbs.

Despite this, English, as opposed to German, has very strict word order. In German, word order can be used as a means to emphasize a constituent in an independent clause by moving it to the beginning of the sentence. This is a defining characteristic of German as a V2 (verb-second) language, where, in independent clauses, the finite verb always comes second and is preceded by one and only one constituent. In closed questions, V1 (verb-first) word order is used. And lastly, dependent clauses use verb-final word order. However, German cannot be called an SVO language since no actual constraints are imposed on the placement of the subject and object(s), even though a preference for a certain word-order over others can be observed (such as putting the subject after the finite verb in independent clauses unless it already precedes the verb^{[clarification needed]}).

Phrase word orders and branching[edit]

The order of constituents in a phrase can vary as much as the order of constituents in a clause. Normally, the noun phrase and the adpositional phrase are investigated. Within the noun phrase, one investigates whether the following modifiers occur before and/or after the head noun.

• adjective (red house vs house red)
• determiner (this house vs house this)
• numeral (two houses vs houses two)
• possessor (my house vs house my)
• relative clause (the by me built house vs the house built by me)

Within the adpositional clause, one investigates whether the languages makes use of prepositions (in London), postpositions (London in), or both (normally with different adpositions at both sides) either separately (For whom? or Whom for?) or at the same time (from her away; Dutch example: met hem mee meaning together with him).

There are several common correlations between sentence-level word order and phrase-level constituent order. For example, SOV languages generally put modifiers before heads and use postpositions. VSO languages tend to place modifiers after their heads, and use prepositions. For SVO languages, either order is common.

For example, French (SVO) uses prepositions (dans la voiture, à gauche), and places adjectives after (une voiture spacieuse). However, a small class of adjectives generally go before their heads (une grande voiture). On the other hand, in English (also SVO) adjectives almost always go before nouns (a big car), and adverbs can go either way, but initially is more common (greatly improved). (English has a very small number of adjectives that go after the heads, such as extraordinaire, which kept its position when borrowed from French.) Russian places numerals after nouns to express approximation (шесть домов=six houses, домов шесть=circa six houses).

Pragmatic word order[edit]

Some languages do not have a fixed word order and often use a significant amount of morphological marking to disambiguate the roles of the arguments. However, the degree of marking alone does not indicate whether a language uses a fixed or free word order: some languages may use a fixed order even when they provide a high degree of marking, while others (such as some varieties of Datooga) may combine a free order with a lack of morphological distinction between arguments.

Typologically, there is a trend that high-animacy actors are more likely to be topical than low-animacy undergoers; this trend can come through even in languages with free word order, giving a statistical bias for SO order (or OS order in ergative systems; however, ergative systems do not always extend to the highest levels of animacy, sometimes giving way to an accusative system (see split ergativity)).^[15]

Most languages with a high degree of morphological marking have rather flexible word orders, such as Polish, Hungarian, Portuguese, Latin, Albanian, and O’odham. In some languages, a general word order can be identified, but this is much harder in others.^[16] When the word order is free, different choices of word order can be used to help identify the theme and the rheme.

Hungarian[edit]

Word order in Hungarian sentences is changed according to the speaker’s communicative intentions. Hungarian word order is not free in the sense that it must reflect the information structure of the sentence, distinguishing the emphatic part that carries new information (rheme) from the rest of the sentence that carries little or no new information (theme).

The position of focus in a Hungarian sentence is immediately before the verb, that is, nothing can separate the emphatic part of the sentence from the verb.

For «Kate ate a piece of cake«, the possibilities are:

1. «Kati megevett egy szelet tortát.» (same word order as English) [«Kate ate a piece of cake.«]
2. «Egy szelet tortát Kati evett meg.» (emphasis on agent [Kate]) [«A piece of cake Kate ate.«] (One of the pieces of cake was eaten by Kate.)
3. «Kati evett meg egy szelet tortát.» (also emphasis on agent [Kate]) [«Kate ate a piece of cake.«] (Kate was the one eating one piece of cake.)
4. «Kati egy szelet tortát evett meg.» (emphasis on object [cake]) [«Kate a piece of cake ate.»] (Kate ate a piece of cake – cf. not a piece of bread.)
5. «Egy szelet tortát evett meg Kati.» (emphasis on number [a piece, i.e. only one piece]) [«A piece of cake ate Kate.»] (Only one piece of cake was eaten by Kate.)
6. «Megevett egy szelet tortát Kati.» (emphasis on completeness of action) [«Ate a piece of cake Kate.»] (A piece of cake had been finished by Kate.)
7. «Megevett Kati egy szelet tortát.» (emphasis on completeness of action) [«Ate Kate a piece of cake.«] (Kate finished with a piece of cake.)

The only freedom in Hungarian word order is that the order of parts outside the focus position and the verb may be freely changed without any change to the communicative focus of the sentence, as seen in sentences 2 and 3 as well as in sentences 6 and 7 above. These pairs of sentences have the same information structure, expressing the same communicative intention of the speaker, because the part immediately preceding the verb is left unchanged.

Note that the emphasis can be on the action (verb) itself, as seen in sentences 1, 6 and 7, or it can be on parts other than the action (verb), as seen in sentences 2, 3, 4 and 5. If the emphasis is not on the verb, and the verb has a co-verb (in the above example ‘meg’), then the co-verb is separated from the verb, and always follows the verb. Also note that the enclitic -t marks the direct object: ‘torta’ (cake) + ‘-t’ -> ‘tortát’.

Hindi-Urdu[edit]

Hindi-Urdu (Hindustani) is essentially a verb-final (SOV) language, with relatively free word order since in most cases postpositions mark quite explicitly the relationships of noun phrases with other constituents of the sentence.^[17] Word order in Hindustani usually does not signal grammatical functions.^[18] Constituents can be scrambled to express different information structural configurations, or for stylistic reasons. The first syntactic constituent in a sentence is usually the topic,^[19][18] which may under certain conditions be marked by the particle «to» (तो / تو), similar in some respects to Japanese topic marker は (wa).^{[20][21][22][23]} Some rules governing the position of words in a sentence are as follows:

• An adjective comes before the noun it modifies in its unmarked position. However, the possessive and reflexive pronominal adjectives can occur either to the left or to the right of the noun it describes.
• Negation must come either to the left or to the right of the verb it negates. For compound verbs or verbal construction using auxiliaries the negation can occur either to the left of the first verb, in-between the verbs or to the right of the second verb (the default position being to the left of the main verb when used with auxiliary and in-between the primary and the secondary verb when forming a compound verb).
• Adverbs usually precede the adjectives they qualify in their unmarked position, but when adverbs are constructed using the instrumental case postposition se (से /سے) (which qualifies verbs), their position in the sentence becomes free. However, since both the instrumental and the ablative case are marked by the same postposition «se» (से /سے), when both are present in a sentence then the quantity they modify cannot appear adjacent to each other^{[clarification needed]}.^[24][18]
• «kyā » (क्या / کیا) «what» as the yes-no question marker occurs at the beginning or the end of a clause as its unmarked positions but it can be put anywhere in the sentence except the preverbal position, where instead it is interpreted as interrogative «what».

Some of all the possible word order permutations of the sentence «The girl received a gift from the boy on her birthday.» are shown below.

lar̥ki ko lar̥ke se janmdin pe taufā milā lar̥ke se lar̥ki ko janmdin pe taufā milā janmdin pe lar̥ki ko milā lar̥ke se taufā taufā lar̥ke se lar̥ki ko janmdin pe milā milā janmdin pe lar̥ki ko taufā lar̥ke se

lar̥ki ko taufā lar̥ke se janmdin pe milā lar̥ke se taufā lar̥ki ko janmdin pe milā janmdin pe lar̥ke se taufā lar̥ki ko milā taufā lar̥ke se janmdin pe milā lar̥ki ko milā lar̥ki ko janmdin pe taufā lar̥ke se

taufā lar̥ki ko lar̥ke se janmdin pe milā taufā lar̥ke se lar̥ki ko milā janmdin pe janmdin pe milā lar̥ke se taufā lar̥ki ko lar̥ke se janmdin pe milā taufā lar̥ki ko milā taufā lar̥ki ko janmdin pe lar̥ke se

lar̥ke se milā lar̥ki ko taufā janmdin pe lar̥ke se milā taufā lar̥ki ko janmdin pe taufā lar̥ke se milā lar̥ki ko janmdin pe taufā milā lar̥ke se janmdin pe lar̥ki ko milā lar̥ki ko lar̥ke se janmdin pe taufā

lar̥ke se taufā lar̥ki ko janmdin pe milā lar̥ke se janmdin pe lar̥ki ko milā taufā taufā janmdin pe lar̥ke se milā lar̥ki ko lar̥ki ko janmdin pe taufā milā lar̥ke se milā lar̥ke se lar̥ki ko janmdin pe taufā

Portuguese[edit]

In Portuguese, clitic pronouns and commas allow many different orders:^{[citation needed]}

• «Eu vou entregar a você amanhã.» [«I will deliver to you tomorrow.»] (same word order as English)
• «Entregarei a você amanhã.» [«{I} will deliver to you tomorrow.»]
• «Eu lhe entregarei amanhã.» [«I to you will deliver tomorrow.»]
• «Entregar-lhe-ei amanhã.» [«Deliver to you {I} will tomorrow.»] (mesoclisis)
• «A ti, eu entregarei amanhã.» [«To you I will deliver tomorrow.»]
• «A ti, entregarei amanhã.» [«To you deliver {I} will tomorrow.»]
• «Amanhã, entregar-te-ei» [«Tomorrow {I} will deliver to you»]
• «Poderia entregar, eu, a você amanhã?» [«Could deliver I to you tomorrow?]

Braces ({ }) are used above to indicate omitted subject pronouns, which may be implicit in Portuguese. Because of conjugation, the grammatical person is recovered.

Latin[edit]

In Latin, the endings of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns allow for extremely flexible order in most situations. Latin lacks articles.

The Subject, Verb, and Object can come in any order in a Latin sentence, although most often (especially in subordinate clauses) the verb comes last.^[25] Pragmatic factors, such as topic and focus, play a large part in determining the order. Thus the following sentences each answer a different question:^[26]

• «Romulus Romam condidit.» [«Romulus founded Rome»] (What did Romulus do?)
• «Hanc urbem condidit Romulus.» [«Romulus founded this city»] (Who founded this city?)
• «Condidit Romam Romulus.» [«Romulus founded Rome»] (What happened?)

Latin prose often follows the word order «Subject, Direct Object, Indirect Object, Adverb, Verb»,^[27] but this is more of a guideline than a rule. Adjectives in most cases go before the noun they modify,^[28] but some categories, such as those that determine or specify (e.g. Via Appia «Appian Way»), usually follow the noun. In Classical Latin poetry, lyricists followed word order very loosely to achieve a desired scansion.

Albanian[edit]

Due to the presence of grammatical cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, and in some cases or dialects vocative and locative) applied to nouns, pronouns and adjectives, the Albanian language permits a large number of positional combination of words. In spoken language a word order differing from the most common S-V-O helps the speaker putting emphasis on a word, thus changing partially the message delivered. Here is an example:

• «Marku më dha një dhuratë (mua).» [«Mark (me) gave a present to me.»] (neutral narrating sentence.)
• «Marku (mua) më dha një dhuratë.» [«Mark to me (me) gave a present.»] (emphasis on the indirect object, probably to compare the result of the verb on different persons.)
• «Marku një dhuratë më dha (mua).» [«Mark a present (me) gave to me»] (meaning that Mark gave her only a present, and not something else or more presents.)
• «Marku një dhuratë (mua) më dha.» [«Mark a present to me (me) gave»] (meaning that Mark gave a present only to her.)
• «Më dha Marku një dhuratë (mua).» [«Gave Mark to me a present.»] (neutral sentence, but puts less emphasis on the subject.)
• «Më dha një dhuratë Marku (mua).» [«Gave a present to me Mark.»] (probably is the cause of an event being introduced later.)
• «Më dha (mua) Marku një dhurate.» [«Gave to me Mark a present.»] (same as above.)
• «Më dha një dhuratë mua Marku» [«(Me) gave a present to me Mark.»] (puts emphasis on the fact that the receiver is her and not someone else.)
• «Një dhuratë më dha Marku (mua)» [«A present gave Mark to me.»] (meaning it was a present and not something else.)
• «Një dhuratë Marku më dha (mua)» [«A present Mark gave to me.»] (puts emphasis on the fact that she got the present and someone else got something different.)
• «Një dhuratë (mua) më dha Marku.» [«A present to me gave Mark.»] (no particular emphasis, but can be used to list different actions from different subjects.)
• «Një dhuratë (mua) Marku më dha.» [«A present to me Mark (me) gave»] (remembers that at least a present was given to her by Mark.)
• «Mua më dha Marku një dhuratë.» [«To me (me) gave Mark a present.» (is used when Mark gave something else to others.)
• «Mua një dhuratë më dha Marku.» [«To me a present (me) gave Mark.»] (emphasis on «to me» and the fact that it was a present, only one present or it was something different from usual.)
• «Mua Marku një dhuratë më dha» [«To me Mark a present (me) gave.»] (Mark gave her only one present.)
• «Mua Marku më dha një dhuratë» [«To me Mark (me) gave a present.»] (puts emphasis on Mark. Probably the others didn’t give her present, they gave something else or the present wasn’t expected at all.)

In these examples, «(mua)» can be omitted when not in first position, causing a perceivable change in emphasis; the latter being of different intensity. «Më» is always followed by the verb. Thus, a sentence consisting of a subject, a verb and two objects (a direct and an indirect one), can be
expressed in six different ways without «mua», and in twenty-four different ways with «mua», adding up to thirty possible combinations.

O’odham (Papago-Pima)[edit]

O’odham is a language that is spoken in southern Arizona and Northern Sonora, Mexico. It has free word order, with only the auxiliary bound to one spot. Here is an example, in literal translation:^[14]

• «Wakial ‘o g wipsilo ha-cecposid.» [Cowboy is the calves them branding.] (The cowboy is branding the calves.)
• «Wipsilo ‘o ha-cecposid g wakial.» [Calves is them branding the cowboy.]
• «Ha-cecposid ‘o g wakial g wipsilo.» [Them Branding is the cowboy the calves.]
• «Wipsilo ‘o g wakial ha-cecposid.» [Calves is the cowboy them branding.]
• «Ha-cecposid ‘o g wipsilo g wakial.» [Them branding is the calves the cowboy.]
• «Wakial ‘o ha-cecposid g wipsilo.» [Cowboy is them branding the calves.]

These examples are all grammatically-valid variations on the sentence «The cowboy is branding the calves,» but some are rarely found in natural speech, as is discussed in Grammaticality.

Other issues with word order[edit]

Language change[edit]

Languages change over time. When language change involves a shift in a language’s syntax, this is called syntactic change. An example of this is found in Old English, which at one point had flexible word order, before losing it over the course of its evolution.^[29] In Old English, both of the following sentences would be considered grammatically correct:

• «Martianus hæfde his sunu ær befæst.» [Martianus had his son earlier established.] (Martianus had earlier established his son.)
• «Se wolde gelytlian þone lyfigendan hælend.» [He would diminish the living saviour.]

This flexibility continues into early Middle English, where it seems to drop out of usage.^[30] Shakespeare’s plays use OV word order frequently, as can be seen from this example:

• «It was our selfe thou didst abuse.»^[31]

A modern speaker of English would possibly recognise this as a grammatically comprehensible sentence, but nonetheless archaic. There are some verbs, however, that are entirely acceptable in this format:

• «Are they good?»^[32]

This is acceptable to a modern English speaker and is not considered archaic. This is due to the verb «to be», which acts as both auxiliary and main verb. Similarly, other auxiliary and modal verbs allow for VSO word order («Must he perish?»). Non-auxiliary and non-modal verbs require insertion of an auxiliary to conform to modern usage («Did he buy the book?»). Shakespeare’s usage of word order is not indicative of English at the time, which had dropped OV order at least a century before.^[33]

This variation between archaic and modern can also be shown in the change between VSO to SVO in Coptic, the language of the Christian Church in Egypt.^[34]

Dialectal variation[edit]

There are some languages where a certain word order is preferred by one or more dialects, while others use a different order. One such case is Andean Spanish, spoken in Peru. While Spanish is classified as an SVO language,^[35] the variation of Spanish spoken in Peru has been influenced by contact with Quechua and Aymara, both SOV languages.^[36] This has had the effect of introducing OV (object-verb) word order into the clauses of some L1 Spanish speakers (moreso than would usually be expected), with more L2 speakers using similar constructions.

Poetry[edit]

Poetry and stories can use different word orders to emphasize certain aspects of the sentence. In English, this is called anastrophe. Here is an example:

«Kate loves Mark.»

«Mark, Kate loves.»

Here SVO is changed to OSV to emphasize the object.

Translation[edit]

Differences in word order complicate translation and language education – in addition to changing the individual words, the order must also be changed. The area in Linguistics that is concerned with translation and education is language acquisition. The reordering of words can run into problems, however, when transcribing stories. Rhyme scheme can change, as well as the meaning behind the words. This can be especially problematic when translating poetry.

See also[edit]

• Antisymmetry
• Information flow
• Language change

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

As Cerberus hints in his comment on Aspinea’s answer, it’s quite common to use word order to convey information structure. (Sadly, Wikipedia doesn’t have an article on the relevant sense of the phrase «information structure,» and I can’t find a good nontechnical introduction elsewhere. The article «Basic Notions of Information Structure» by Manfred Krifka is a good survey of the subject for linguists.)

Information structure is a pretty broad subject, but there are two basic ideas that are especially important when you’re talking about word order: topic and focus. The topic of a sentence is, roughly speaking, «what the sentence is about». Usually, a sequence of sentences will have the same topic, or at least closely related topics. But sometimes you’ll want to change topics between sentences, or to contrast two topics with one another — and speakers will tend to mark the new topic in some way when they do this.

English actually does mark topic changes using word order, at least some of the time. In passages like these…

Mary likes beans. Me, I can’t stand them.

Mary likes beans. Lentils, she doesn’t like so much.

…the left-dislocated word in the second sentence («me» or «lentils») is marking a change in topic: «Okay, we were talking about beans before, but now we’re gonna switch gears and talk about lentils for a while.»

The other important idea is focus. Focus actually has a bunch of different uses (see the Krifka article I linked up above for the gory details) but one of the biggest uses is to mark the answers to questions. In English we use prosody to mark focus, like so:

«Who likes beans?»
«MARY likes beans.»

«How does Mary feel about beans?»
«Mary LIKES beans.»

«What does Mary like to eat?»
«Mary likes BEANS.»

But some languages use word order to mark focus too.

So let me give some examples from K’ichee’, which is a «free word order» language that I’ve studied for a while. Default word order in K’ichee’ is VOS, so the standard way of saying «Mary likes beans» would look like this:

Karaj kinaq’ ra’l Mari’y «Mary likes beans» (literally «Likes beans miss Mary»)

In K’ichee’, both topics and foci can move to the left of the clause. After a topic, you get a pause; there’s no pause after a focus; and if both the topic and focus move, the topic goes first. You can also move words to the end of the clause, which makes them sound a bit like an afterthought. So the «real» word order in K’iche’ is more like «Topic (pause) focus V normal-O normal-S (pause) afterthought,» though of course you won’t get all those slots filled in a single clause.

Anyway, this lets you say things like these:

Kinaq’ karaj ra’l Mari’y «Mary likes BEANS»

(This answers the question «what does Mary like?»)

Ra’l Mari’y (pause) karaj kinaq’ «As for Mary, she likes beans.»

(This changes the topic: we were talking about someone else, now we’re talking about Mary)

Ra’l Mari’y (pause) kinaq’ karaj «As for Mary, she likes BEANS.»

(This changes the topic and answers a question. For instance, maybe you asked a minute ago about what someone else likes, but now you’re asking what Mary likes, and I’m answering the second question)

Karaj ra’l Mari’y (pause) kinaq «Mary likes ’em…. likes beans, that is.»

(This makes «beans» an afterthought. You might use it when you’ve been talking on the topic of beans for a while, but you want to remind your listener that that’s what you’re talking about.)

And so on. The upshot is, all six permutations of subject, verb and object are possible in K’ichee’, given the right combination of topic, focus and afterthought.

For what it’s worth too, I don’t speak Polish but it looks like something similar is going on in Kamil Stachowski’s Polish examples. Note that sometimes he says that a particular word order answers a specific question. This suggests to me that those word orders are being used for focus-marking in Polish — and a little Googling turns up this article on Polish focus-marking claiming that word order is indeed relevant.

I’m not sure which post it was, but…

For the most part across languages, and Latin is included here, so-called «free» word order is a misnomer. The word order is merely relatively flexible. There are still preferred defaults (hence Latin qualifying as an SOV language), with alternate syntaxes changing the emphasis without the need to circumlocute. In English, for example, we can say «The dog bit the man» (default) or we can say «The man was bitten (by the dog)» (passive voice) or we can say «It was the man whom the dog bit» (topic fronting). In Latin, because of the difference between nominative and accusative, you can convey the second two examples merely by re-arranging the words for «dog» and «man», which is something we cannot do in English even with pronouns: It is always «She saw him» and never «Him saw her».

Latin will always cliticize particles such as -ne and -que to the relevant word, not to just any word. Questions will almost always bring the verb to the front, otherwise the focus of the question. Prepositions will always go right before the relevant noun phrase. Negation will always go right before the thing it is negating.

Latin will never have something like «Mater pater frater soror et et et et domi Romae in Germania scribit legit dormiunt.» It is completely unnatural and impossible to tell who is doing what where.

(redirected from Free word order)
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Word Order

 

a multifunctional formal means used in sentence construction. In Russian and other synthetic languages, word order mainly provides the contextual links in a sentence and is a means for the actual division of a sentence. To this basic function of word order may be added others, including stylistic, expressive, rhythmic, and melodic. Word order has no distinctive role beyond actual division and acts as an accompanying element of syntatic relations (neutral word order). In English and other analytic languages, word order shapes the grammatical structure of a sentence and is fixed; word placement is determined by the role of the words in the sentence. Isolating languages use word order as the principal means of expressing relations between words. Grammatical word order differs from grammaticalized word order, in which the syntactic function of a word is determined by its position in a sentence; for example, in the Russian sentence Veslo zadeloplat’e (“The oar got caught in the dress”), the subject is identified by its initial position. Word order not usually possessing a grammatical function is sometimes known as free word order.

I. N. KRUCHININA

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Oct 20, 2011 by

In the previous posting, I outlined the recently proposed theory by Gell-Mann and Ruhlen on the origin and evolution of word order. According to their proposal, the most recent common ancestor of all currently living human languages, Proto-Human, had the SOV order. They reconstruct this by examining word orders in modern languages, as well as in some earlier languages. There are, however, several problematic aspects to Gell-Mann & Ruhlen’s work (henceforth, G-M&R), and although they themselves claim that they “do not think that such corrections will affect [their] conclusions”, I’d like nonetheless to point out some problems with their account.

One issue that is immediately apparent concerns free word order (FWO) languages. G-M&R admit the possibility that a language may have a mixed word order pattern with no single dominant word order. In their sample of 2136 languages, 125 languages (approximately 6%) are listed as “languages with mixed word order” (see Table 1 in G-M&R and their supplemental data). Curiously, G-M&R do not give a definition of what counts as a “language with mixed word order”. Matthew S. Dryer in World Atlas of Linguistic Structures Online lists 189 languages out of 1377 (13.7%) as having “no dominant order”. Clearly, the discrepancy in the proportion of FWO languages according to the two studies cannot be a result of different sampling procedures, so it must be the case that the two studies use different definitions and consequently classify languages differently. Indeed, WALS classifies Adynyamathanha (a Pama-Nyungan language in Australia) as having “no dominant word order”, while G-M&R — as SOV; WALS lists Alawa (another Australian Aboriginal language) as having “no dominant word order”, while G-M&R — as SVO; similarly, WALS classifies Amahuaca (a Panoan language spoken in Brazil and Peru) as having “no dominant word order”, butG-M&R — again as SOV. These discrepancies are disturbing, especially to the extent that G-M&R classify languages as SOV, while other sources classify them otherwise.

Clearly, allowing different word orders in different constructions is not sufficient for G-M&R to classify a language as a FWO language. For example, both Latin and Russian allow all six imaginable permutations of the Subject, Object and Verb, and yet G-M&R list Latin as SOV and Russian as SVO. There are good reasons to believe that these are indeed the dominant (though not the only possible) word orders in these languages. For example, in Russian if both the subject and the object are such that they do not distinguish nominative and accusative cases, as in the famous Jakobson’s example Mat’ ljubit doch’ (literally, ‘mother loves daughter’), such sentences are understood as SVO rather than OVS (e.g. the above example is understood as ‘The mother loves the daugher’, not ‘The daughter loves the mother’). Experimental work by Irina Sekerina of the College of Staten Island confirms as much.

Still, someone considering statistical frequency of various word orders in spoken Russian might easily reach the conclusion that Russian is an SOV language, as this is the most common word order. Conversely, someone examining Russian narratives (ranging from biblical texts to fairy tales or popular jokes) may well conclude that Russian is a VSO language. In fact, G-M&R’s claim that early Slavic was a VSO language is somewhat suspect, because it is based on examinations of (and reconstructions from) surviving manuscripts most of which are narrative (specifically, biblical) in nature (thanks for David Erschler, Philip Minlos and Pavel Iosad for a discussion of this point).

All of this is not to say that G-M&R’s classification of Russian as SVO is suspect, but their classifications of some other languages (on whose present-day syntax and especially historical development we know precious little) may be problematic.

Furthermore, Dryer distinguishes at least three types of languages with no dominant word order. The first type is languages that can be called non-configurational, i.e. languages with highly flexible word order, all or most orders of subject, object, and verb will be possible and common; Nunggubuyu (a Gunwinyguan language spoken in northern Australia) is an example of such a language. Another type includes “languages lack a dominant order only because just the subject or just the object exhibits flexibility with respect to the verb”. An example of such a language is Syrian Arabic, which allows both SVO and VSO orders; there does not seem to be a reason (according to Dryer and the references he cites) to consider one of them dominant. However, only these two orders are common and the order of verb and object is relatively inflexible. The third type of language lacking a dominant order consists of “languages in which different word orders occur but the choice is syntactically determined”, such as German and Dutch, where

“the dominant order is SVO in main clauses lacking an auxiliary and SOV in subordinate clauses and clauses containing an auxiliary. Because this results in both orders being common, neither order is considered dominant here and these two languages are shown on the map as lacking a dominant word order.”

Interestingly, G-M&R’s list of languages with mixed word order seems to include only languages of the second and third type, that is languages that allow two (but no more than two) alternate word orders. And even the decision to include a language into the list of mixed word order languages is not always clear. For instance, they classify Dutch as mixed SOV/SVO, but German, which exhibits very similar word order facts, as SVO.

When it comes to non-configurational languages, that is those where any of the six word orders are possible and the dominant word order is particularly difficult to determine, G-M&R claim that

“it is not always easy to determine which order is basic, and indeed for some languages it has been claimed that there is no basic order. Whether this is really true is difficult to determine. In any event, notwithstanding the often free word order, the Australian family is generally
regarded as having SOV as its most characteristic type.”

Thus, G-M&R list Nunggubuyu and several other Australian Aboriginal non-configurational languages as SOV. In addition to these non-configurational Australian languages, several polysynthetic languages (including Yupik, Inuit, Greenlandic Eskimo etc.) are listed as SOV by G-M&R. To the extent that there exists a bias toward listing languages with problematic word order facts as SOV, this may very well distort G-M&R’s claims about the origin and evolution of word order.

Finally, languages with two (or more) competing word orders, where the choice is syntactically determined, suggest that the order of Subject, Object and Verb may not be a primitive, as it is considered by G-M&R, but rather an artifact of several factors, perhaps ones that order the verb with respect to the subject and the object separately, as well as ordering the subject and the object with respect to each other, or ordering the verb with respect to other clausal elements (e.g. negation, adverbs, auxiliaries, tense, etc.) not considered by the SOV ordering classification adopted by G-M&R. I will elaborate on this point in the following posting.

In linguistics, word order typology is the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic sub-domains are also of interest. The primary word orders that are of interest are the constituent order of a clause — the relative order of subject, object, and verb; the order of modifiers (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, possessives, and adjuncts) in a noun phrase; and the order of adverbials.

Some languages use relatively restrictive word order, often relying on the order of constituents to convey important grammatical information. Others—often those that convey grammatical information through inflection—allow more flexibility, which can be used to encode pragmatic information such as topicalisation or focus. Most languages, however, have a preferred word order, and other word orders, if used, are considered «marked».

Most nominative-accusative languages—which have a major word class of nouns and clauses that include subject and object—define constituent word order in terms of the finite verb (V) and its arguments, the subject (S), and object (O).

There are six theoretically possible basic word orders for the transitive sentence. The overwhelming majority of the world’s languages are either subject-verb-object (SVO) or subject-object-verb (SOV), with a much smaller but still significant portion using verb-subject-object (VSO) word order. The remaining three arrangements are exceptionally rare, with verb-object-subject (VOS) being slightly more common than object-subject-verb (OSV), and object-verb-subject (OVS) being significantly more rare than the two preceding orders.

Video Word order

Constituent word orders

These are all possible word orders for the subject, verb, and object in the order of most common to rarest (the examples use «she» as the subject, «ate» as the verb, and «bread» as the object):

• SOV is the order used by the largest number of distinct languages; languages using it include Korean, Mongolian, Turkish, the Indo-Aryan languages and the Dravidian languages. Some, like Persian, Latin and Quechua, have SOV normal word order but conform less to the general tendencies of other such languages. A sentence glossing as «She bread ate» would be grammatically correct in these languages.
• SVO languages include English, the Romance languages, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Chinese and Swahili, among others. «She ate bread.»
• VSO languages include Classical Arabic, the Insular Celtic languages, and Hawaiian. «Ate she bread» is grammatically correct in these languages.
• VOS languages include Fijian and Malagasy. «Ate bread she.»
• OVS languages include Hixkaryana. «Bread ate she.»
• OSV languages include Xavante and Warao. «Bread she ate.»

Sometimes patterns are more complex: German, Dutch, Afrikaans and Frisian have SOV in subordinates, but V2 word order in main clauses, SVO word order being the most common. Using the guidelines above, the unmarked word order is then SVO.

Others, such as Latin, Greek, Persian, Romanian, Assyrian, Turkish, Finnish, and Basque have no strict word order; rather, the sentence structure is highly flexible and reflects the pragmatics of the utterance. Similarly, Japanese requires that all sentences end with V, but it could be SOV or OSV.

Topic-prominent languages organize sentences to emphasize their topic-comment structure. Nonetheless, there is often a preferred order; in Latin and Turkish, SOV is the most frequent outside of poetry, and in Finnish SVO is both the most frequent and obligatory when case marking fails to disambiguate argument roles. Just as languages may have different word orders in different contexts, so may they have both fixed and free word orders. For example, Russian has a relatively fixed SVO word order in transitive clauses, but a much freer SV / VS order in intransitive clauses. Cases like this can be addressed by encoding transitive and intransitive clauses separately, with the symbol ‘S’ being restricted to the argument of an intransitive clause, and ‘A’ for the actor/agent of a transitive clause. (‘O’ for object may be replaced with ‘P’ for ‘patient’ as well.) Thus, Russian is fixed SVO but flexible SV/VS. In such an approach, the description of word order extends more easily to languages that do not meet the criteria in the preceding section. For example, Mayan languages have been described with the rather uncommon VOS word order. However, they are ergative-absolutive languages, and the more specific word order is intransitive VS, transitive VOA, where S and O arguments both trigger the same type of agreement on the verb. Indeed, many languages that some thought had a VOS word order turn out to be ergative like Mayan.

Maps Word order

Functions of constituent word order

A fixed or prototypical word order is one out of many ways to ease the processing of sentence semantics and reducing ambiguity. One method of making the speech stream less open to ambiguity (complete removal of ambiguity is probably impossible) is a fixed order of arguments and other sentence constituents. This works because speech is inherently linear. Another method is to label the constituents in some way, for example with case marking, agreement, or another marker. Fixed word order reduces expressiveness but added marking increases information load in the speech stream, and for these reasons strict word order seldom occurs together with strict morphological marking, one counter-example being Persian.

Observing discourse patterns, it is found that previously given information (topic) tends to precede new information (comment). Furthermore, acting participants (especially humans) are more likely to be talked about (to be topic) than things simply undergoing actions (like oranges being eaten). If acting participants are often topical, and topic tends to be expressed early in the sentence, this entails that acting participants have a tendency to be expressed early in the sentence. This tendency can then grammaticalize to a privileged position in the sentence, the subject.

The mentioned functions of word order can be seen to affect the frequencies of the various word order patterns: The vast majority of languages have an order in which S precedes O and V. Whether V precedes O or O precedes V however, has been shown to be a very telling difference with wide consequences on phrasal word orders.

Knowledge of word order on the other hand can be applied to identify the thematic relations of the NPs in a clause of an unfamiliar language. If we can identify the verb in a clause, and we know that the language is strict accusative SVO, then we know that Grob smock Blug probably means that Grob is the smocker and Blug the entity smocked. However, since very strict word order is rare in practice, such applications of word order studies are rarely effective.

src: study.com

History of constituent word order

A paper by Murray Gell-Mann and Merritt Ruhlen, building on work in comparative linguistics, asserts that the distribution of word order types in the world’s languages was originally SOV. The paper compares a survey of 2135 languages with a «presumed phylogenetic tree» of languages, concluding that changes in word order tend to follow particular pathways, and the transmission of word order is to a great extent vertical (i.e. following the phylogenetic tree of ancestry) as opposed to horizontal (areal, i.e. by diffusion). According to this analysis, the most recent ancestor of currently known languages was spoken recently enough to trace the whole evolutionary path of word order in most cases.

There is speculation on how the Celtic languages developed VSO word order. An Afro-Asiatic substratum has been hypothesized, but current scholarship considers this claim untenable, not least because Afro-Asiatic and Celtic were not in contact in the relevant period.

src: i.ytimg.com

Phrase word orders and branching

The order of constituents in a phrase can vary as much as the order of constituents in a clause. Normally, the noun phrase and the adpositional phrase are investigated. Within the noun phrase, one investigates whether the following modifiers occur before or after the head noun.

• adjective (red house vs house red)
• determiner (this house vs house this)
• numeral (two houses vs houses two)
• possessor (my house vs house my)
• relative clause (the by me built house vs the house built by me)

Within the adpositional clause, one investigates whether the languages makes use of prepositions (in London), postpositions (London in), or both (normally with different adpositions at both sides).

There are several common correlations between sentence-level word order and phrase-level constituent order. For example, SOV languages generally put modifiers before heads and use postpositions. VSO languages tend to place modifiers after their heads, and use prepositions. For SVO languages, either order is common.

For example, French (SVO) uses prepositions (dans la voiture, à gauche), and places adjectives after (une voiture spacieuse). However, a small class of adjectives generally go before their heads (une grande voiture). On the other hand, in English (also SVO) adjectives almost always go before nouns (a big car), and adverbs can go either way, but initially is more common (greatly improved). (English has a very small number of adjectives that go after their heads, such as extraordinaire, which kept its position when borrowed from French.)

src: i.ytimg.com

Pragmatic word order

Some languages have no fixed word order. These languages often use a significant amount of morphological marking to disambiguate the roles of the arguments. However, some languages use a fixed word order, even if they provide a degree of marking that would support free word order. Also, some languages with free word order—such as some varieties of Datooga—combine free word order with a lack of morphological distinction between arguments.

Typologically there is a trend that highly animate actors are more likely topical than low-animate undergoers, this trend would come through even in free-word-order languages giving a statistical bias for SO order (or OS in the case of ergative systems, however ergative systems do not usually extend to the highest levels of animacy, usually giving way to some form of nominative system at least in the pronominal system). Most languages with a high degree of morphological marking have rather flexible word orders such as Turkish, Latin, Portuguese, Ancient and Modern Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Serbo-Croatian, Russian (in intransitive clauses), and Finnish. In some of those, a canonical order can still be identified, but in others this is not possible. When the word order is free, different choices of word order can be used to help identify the theme and the rheme.

Hungarian

In Hungarian, the enclitic -t marks the direct object. For «Kate ate a piece of cake«, the possibilities are:

• «Kati megevett egy szelet tortát.» (same word order as English) [«Kate ate a piece of cake.«]
• «Egy szelet tortát Kati evett meg.» (emphasis on agent [Kate]) [«A piece of cake Kate ate.«]
• «Kati evett meg egy szelet tortát.» (also emphasis on agent [Kate]) [«Kate ate a piece of cake.«]
• «Kati egy szelet tortát evett meg.» (emphasis on object [cake]) [«Kate a piece of cake ate.»]
• «Egy szelet tortát evett meg Kati.» (emphasis on number [a piece, i.e. only one piece]) [«A piece of cake ate Kate.»]
• «Megevett egy szelet tortát Kati.» (emphasis on completeness of action) [«Ate a piece of cake Kate.»]
• «Megevett Kati egy szelet tortát.» (emphasis on completeness of action) [«Ate Kate a piece of cake.«]

Portuguese

In Portuguese, clitic pronouns and commas allow many different orders:

• Eu vou entregar para você amanhã. [«I will deliver to you tomorrow.»] (same word order as English)
• Entregarei para você amanhã. [«{I} will deliver to you tomorrow.»]
• Eu lhe entregarei amanhã. [«I to you will deliver tomorrow.»]
• Entregar-lhe-ei amanhã. [«Deliver to you {I} will tomorrow.»] (mesoclisis)
• A ti, eu entregarei amanhã. [«To you I will deliver tomorrow.»]
• A ti, entregarei amanhã. [«To you deliver {I} will tomorrow.»]
• Amanhã, entregarei para você. [«Tomorrow {I} will deliver to you»]
• Poderia entregar, eu, a você amanhã? [«Could deliver I to you tomorrow?]

Braces ({ }) were used above to indicate omitted subject pronouns, which may be left implicit in Portuguese. Thanks to conjugation, the grammatical person is recovered.

Latin

In Latin, the endings of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns allow for extremely flexible order in most situations. Latin lacks articles.

The Subject, Verb, and Object can come in any order in a Latin sentence, although most often (especially in subordinate clauses) the verb comes last. Pragmatic factors, such as topic and focus, play a large part in determining the order. Thus the following sentences each answer a different question:

• Romulus Romam condidit. «Romulus founded Rome» (What did Romulus do?)
• Hanc urbem condidit Romulus. «Romulus founded this city» (Who founded this city?)
• Condidit Romam Romulus. «Romulus founded Rome» (What happened?)

Latin prose often follows the word order «Subject, Direct Object, Indirect Object, Adverb, Verb», but this is more of a guideline than a rule. Adjectives in most cases go before the noun they modify, but some categories, such as those that determine or specify (e.g. Via Appia «Appian Way»), usually follow the noun. In Classical Latin poetry, lyricists followed word order very loosely to achieve a desired scansion.

Albanian

Due to the presence of grammatical cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, and in some cases or dialects vocative and locative) applied to nouns, pronouns and adjectives, the Albanian language permits a large number of positional combination of words. In spoken language a word order differing from the most common S-V-O helps the speaker putting emphasis on a word, thus changing partially the message delivered. Here it is an example:

• «Marku më dha një dhuratë (mua).» [«Mark (me) gave a present to me.», neutral narrating sentence.]
• «Marku (mua) më dha një dhuratë.» [«Mark to me (me) gave a present.», emphasis on the indirect object, probably to compare the result of the verb on different persons.]
• «Marku një dhuratë më dha (mua).» [«Mark a present (me) gave to me», meaning that Mark gave her only a present, and not something else or more presents.]
• «Marku një dhuratë (mua) më dha.» [«Mark a present to me (me) gave», meaning that Mark gave a present only to her.]
• «Më dha Marku një dhuratë (mua).» [«Gave Mark to me a present.», neutral sentence, but puts less emphasis on the subject.]
• «Më dha një dhuratë Marku (mua).» [«Gave a present to me Mark.», probably is the cause of an event being introduced later.]
• «Më dha (mua) Marku një dhurate.» [«Gave to me Mark a present.», same as above.]
• «Më dha një dhuratë mua Marku» [«(Me) gave a present to me Mark.», puts emphasis on the fact that the receiver is her and not someone else.]
• «Një dhuratë më dha Marku (mua)» [«A present gave Mark to me.», meaning it was a present and not something else.]
• «Një dhuratë Marku më dha (mua)» [«A present Mark gave to me.», puts emphasis on the fact that she got the present and someone else got something different.]
• «Një dhuratë (mua) më dha Marku.» [«A present to me gave Mark.», no particular emphasis, but can be used to list different actions from different subjects.]
• «Një dhuratë (mua) Marku më dha.» [«A present to me Mark (me) gave», remembers that at least a present was given to her by Mark.]
• «Mua më dha Marku një dhuratë.» [«To me (me) gave Mark a present.», is used when Mark gave something else to others.]
• «Mua një dhuratë më dha Marku.» [«To me a present (me) gave Mark.», emphasis on «to me» and the fact that it was a present, only one present or it was something different from usual.»]
• «Mua Marku një dhuratë më dha» [«To me Mark a present (me) gave.», Mark gave her only one present.]
• «Mua Marku më dha një dhuratë» [«To me Mark (me) gave a present.» puts emphasis on Mark. Probably the others didn’t give her present, they gave something else or the present wasn’t expected at all.]

In the aforementioned examples, «(mua)» can be omitted causing a perceivable change in emphasis, the latter being of different intensity. «Më» is always followed by the verb. Thus, a sentence consisting of a subject, a verb and two objects (a direct and an indirect one), can be expressed in six different ways without «mua», and in twenty-four different ways with «mua», adding up to thirty possible combinations.

Indo-Aryan languages

The word order of many Indo-Aryan languages can change depending on what specific implications a speaker wishes to make. These are generally aided by the use of appropriate inflectional suffixes. Consider these examples from Bengali:

• ??? ??? ???? ??? [«I that don’t know.», typical, neutral sentence]
• ??? ???? ?? ???? [«I don’t know that.», general emphasis on what isn’t known]
• ??? ??? ???? ??? [«That I don’t know.», agitation about what isn’t known]
• ??? ???? ?? ???? [«That don’t know I.», general emphasis on the person who doesn’t know]
• ???? ?? ??? ???? [«Don’t know I that.», agitation about the person who doesn’t know]
• *???? ?? ??? ???? [*»Don’t know that I.», unused]

src: en.islcollective.com

Other issues

In many languages, changes in word order occur due to topicalization or in questions. However, most languages are generally assumed to have a basic word order, called the unmarked word order; other, marked word orders can then be used to emphasize a sentence element, to indicate modality (such as an interrogative modality), or for other purposes.

For example, English is SVO (subject-verb-object), as in «I don’t know that», but OSV is also possible: «That I don’t know.» This process is called topic-fronting (or topicalization) and is common. In English, OSV is a marked word order because it emphasises the object, and is often accompanied by a change in intonation.

An example of OSV being used for emphasis:

A: I can’t see Alice. (SVO)

B: What about Bill?

A: Bill I can see. (OSV, rather than I can see Bill, SVO)

Non-standard word orders are also found in poetry in English, particularly archaic or romantic terms — as the wedding phrase «With this ring, I thee wed» (SOV) or «Thee I love» (OSV) — as well as in many other languages.

Translation

Differences in word order complicate translation and language education — in addition to changing the individual words, the order must also be changed. This can be simplified by first translating the individual words, then reordering the sentence, as in interlinear gloss, or by reordering the words prior to translation.

src: i.ytimg.com

See also

• Anastrophe, change in word order
• Antisymmetry
• Information flow

src: i.ytimg.com

Notes

src: i.ytimg.com

References

src: i.ytimg.com

Further reading

Source of the article : Wikipedia

Normally, sentences in the English language take a simple form. However, there are times it would be a little complex. In these cases, the basic rules for how words appear in a sentence can help you.

Word order typically refers to the way the words in a sentence are arranged. In the English language, the order of words is important if you wish to accurately and effectively communicate your thoughts and ideas.

Although there are some exceptions to these rules, this article aims to outline some basic sentence structures that can be used as templates. Also, the article provides the rules for the ordering of adverbs and adjectives in English sentences.

Basic Sentence Structure and word order rules in English

For English sentences, the simple rule of thumb is that the subject should always come before the verb followed by the object. This rule is usually referred to as the SVO word order, and then most sentences must conform to this. However, it is essential to know that this rule only applies to sentences that have a subject, verb, and object.

For example

Subject + Verb + Object

He loves food

She killed the rat

Sentences are usually made of at least one clause. A clause is a string of words with a subject(noun) and a predicate (verb). A sentence with just one clause is referred to as a simple sentence, while those with more than one clause are referred to as compound sentences, complex sentences, or compound-complex sentences.

The following is an explanation and example of the most commonly used clause patterns in the English language.

Inversion

The English word order is inverted in questions. The subject changes its place in a question. Also, English questions usually begin with a verb or a helping verb if the verb is complex.

For example

Verb + Subject + object

Can you finish the assignment?

Did you go to work?

Intransitive Verbs

Some sentences use verbs that require no object or nothing else to follow them. These verbs are generally referred to as intransitive verbs. With intransitive verbs, you can form the most basic sentences since all that is required is a subject (made of one noun) and a predicate (made of one verb).

For example

Subject + verb

John eats

Christine fights

Linking Verbs

Linking verbs are verbs that connect a subject to the quality of the subject. Sentences that use linking verbs usually contain a subject, the linking verb and a subject complement or predicate adjective in this order.

For example

Subject + verb + Subject complement/Predicate adjective

The dress was beautiful

Her voice was amazing

Transitive Verbs

Transitive verbs are verbs that tell what the subject did to something else. Sentences that use transitive verbs usually contain a subject, the transitive verb, and a direct object, usually in this order.

For example

Subject + Verb + Direct object

The father slapped his son

The teacher questioned his students

Indirect Objects

Sentences with transitive verbs can have a mixture of direct and indirect objects. Indirect objects are usually the receiver of the action or the audience of the direct object.

For example

Subject + Verb + IndirectObject + DirectObject

He gave the man a good job.

The singer gave the crowd a spectacular concert.

The order of direct and indirect objects can also be reversed. However, for the reversal of the order, there needs to be the inclusion of the preposition “to” before the indirect object. The addition of the preposition transforms the indirect object into what is called a prepositional phrase.

For example

Subject + Verb + DirectObject + Preposition + IndirectObject

He gave a lot of money to the man

The singer gave a spectacular concert to the crowd.

Adverbials

Adverbs are phrases or words that modify or qualify a verb, adjective, or other adverbs. They typically provide information on the when, where, how, and why of an action. Adverbs are usually very difficult to place as they can be in different positions in a sentence. Changing the placement of an adverb in a sentence can change the meaning or emphasis of that sentence.

Therefore, adverbials should be placed as close as possible to the things they modify, generally before the verbs.

For example

He hastily went to work.

He hurriedly ate his food.

However, if the verb is transitive, then the adverb should come after the transitive verb.

For example

John sat uncomfortably in the examination exam.

She spoke quietly in the class

The adverb of place is usually placed before the adverb of time

For example

John goes to work every morning

They arrived at school very late

The adverb of time can also be placed at the beginning of a sentence

For example

On Sunday he is traveling home

Every evening James jogs around the block

When there is more than one verb in the sentence, the adverb should be placed after the first verb.

For example

Peter will never forget his first dog

She has always loved eating rice.

Adjectives

Adjectives commonly refer to words that are used to describe someone or something. Adjectives can appear almost anywhere in the sentence.

Adjectives can sometimes appear after the verb to be

For example

He is fat

She is big

Adjectives can also appear before a noun.

For example

A big house

A fat boy

However, some sentences can contain more than one adjective to describe something or someone. These adjectives have an order in which they can appear before a now. The order is

Opinion – size – physical quality – shape – condition – age – color – pattern – origin – material – type – purpose

If more than one adjective is expected to come before a noun in a sentence, then it should follow this order. This order feels intuitive for native English speakers. However, it can be a little difficult to unpack for non-native English speakers.

For example

The ugly old woman is back

The dirty red car parked outside your house

When more than one adjective comes after a verb, it is usually connected by and

For example

The room is dark and cold

Having said that, Susan is tall and big

Get an expert to perfect your paper