Knowledge of word order

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

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Можно ли использовать вопросительный порядок слов в утвердительных предложениях? Как построить предложение, если в нем нет подлежащего? Об этих и других нюансах читайте в нашей статье.

Прямой порядок слов в английских предложениях

Утвердительные предложения

В английском языке основной порядок слов можно описать формулой SVO: subject – verb – object (подлежащее – сказуемое – дополнение).

Mary reads many books. — Мэри читает много книг.

Подлежащее — это существительное или местоимение, которое стоит в начале предложения (кто? — Mary).

Сказуемое — это глагол, который стоит после подлежащего (что делает? — reads).

Дополнение — это существительное или местоимение, которое стоит после глагола (что? — books).

В английском отсутствуют падежи, поэтому необходимо строго соблюдать основной порядок слов, так как часто это единственное, что указывает на связь между словами.

Подлежащее	Сказуемое	Дополнение	Перевод
My mum	loves	soap operas.	Моя мама любит мыльные оперы.
Sally	found	her keys.	Салли нашла свои ключи.
I	remember	you.	Я помню тебя.

Глагол to be в утвердительных предложениях

Как правило, английское предложение не обходится без сказуемого, выраженного глаголом. Так как в русском можно построить предложение без глагола, мы часто забываем о нем в английском. Например:

Mary is a teacher. — Мэри — учительница. (Мэри является учительницей.)
I’m scared. — Мне страшно. (Я являюсь напуганной.)

Life is unfair. — Жизнь несправедлива. (Жизнь является несправедливой.)
My younger brother is ten years old. — Моему младшему брату десять лет. (Моему младшему брату есть десять лет.)

His friends are from Spain. — Его друзья из Испании. (Его друзья происходят из Испании.)
The vase is on the table. — Ваза на столе. (Ваза находится/стоит на столе.)

Подведем итог, глагол to be в переводе на русский может означать:

• быть/есть/являться;
• находиться / пребывать (в каком-то месте или состоянии);
• существовать;
• происходить (из какой-то местности).

Если вы не уверены, нужен ли to be в вашем предложении в настоящем времени, то переведите предложение в прошедшее время: я на работе — я была на работе. Если в прошедшем времени появляется глагол-связка, то и в настоящем он необходим.

Предложения с there is / there are

Когда мы хотим сказать, что что-то где-то есть или чего-то где-то нет, то нам нужно придерживаться конструкции there + to be в начале предложения.

There is grass in the yard, there is wood on the grass. — На дворе — трава, на траве — дрова.

Если в таких типах предложений мы не используем конструкцию there is / there are, то по-английски подобные предложения будут звучать менее естественно:

There are a lot of people in the room. — В комнате много людей. (естественно)
A lot of people are in the room. — Много людей находится в комнате. (менее естественно)

Обратите внимание, предложения с there is / there are, как правило, переводятся на русский с конца предложения.

Еще конструкция there is / there are нужна, чтобы соблюсти основной порядок слов — SVO (подлежащее – сказуемое – дополнение):

Подлежащее	Сказуемое	Дополнение	Перевод
There	is	too much sugar in my tea.	В моем чае слишком много сахара.

Более подробно о конструкции there is / there are можно прочитать в статье «Грамматика английского языка для начинающих, часть 3».

Местоимение it

Мы, как носители русского языка, в английских предложениях забываем не только про сказуемое, но и про подлежащее. Особенно сложно понять, как перевести на английский подобные предложения: Темнеет. Пора вставать. Приятно было пообщаться. В английском языке во всех этих предложениях должно стоять подлежащее, роль которого будет играть вводное местоимение it. Особенно важно его не забыть, если мы говорим о погоде.

It’s getting dark. — Темнеет.
It’s time to get up. — Пора вставать.
It was nice to talk to you. — Приятно было пообщаться.

Отрицательные предложения

Если предложение отрицательное, то мы ставим отрицательную частицу not после:

• вспомогательного глагола (auxiliary verb);
• модального глагола (modal verb).

Подлежащее	Вспомогательный/Модальный глагол	Частица not	Сказуемое	Дополнение	Перевод
Sally	has	not	found	her keys.	Салли не нашла свои ключи.
My mum	does	not	love	soap operas.	Моя мама не любит мыльные оперы.
He	could	not	save	his reputation.	Он не мог спасти свою репутацию
I	will	not	be	yours.	Я не буду твоей.

Если в предложении единственный глагол — to be, то ставим not после него.

Подлежащее	Глагол to be	Частица not	Дополнение	Перевод
Peter	is	not	an engineer.	Питер не инженер.
I	was	not	at work yesterday.	Я не была вчера на работе.
Her friends	were	not	polite enough.	Ее друзья были недостаточно вежливы.

Порядок слов в вопросах

Для начала скажем, что вопросы бывают двух основных типов:

• закрытые вопросы (вопросы с ответом «да/нет»);
• открытые вопросы (вопросы, на которые можно дать развернутый ответ).

Закрытые вопросы

Чтобы построить вопрос «да/нет», нужно поставить модальный или вспомогательный глагол в начало предложения. Получится следующая структура: вспомогательный/модальный глагол – подлежащее – сказуемое. Следующие примеры вам помогут понять, как утвердительное предложение преобразовать в вопросительное.

She goes to the gym on Mondays. — Она ходит в зал по понедельникам.
Does she go to the gym on Mondays? — Ходит ли она в зал по понедельникам?

He can speak English fluently. — Он умеет бегло говорить по-английски.
Can he speak English fluently? — Умеет ли он бегло говорить по-английски?

Simon has always loved Katy. — Саймон всегда любил Кэти.
Has Simon always loved Katy? — Всегда ли Саймон любил Кэти?

Обратите внимание! Если в предложении есть только глагол to be, то в Present Simple и Past Simple мы перенесем его в начало предложения.

She was at home all day yesterday. — Она была дома весь день.
Was she at home all day yesterday? — Она была дома весь день?

They’re tired. — Они устали.
Are they tired? — Они устали?

Открытые вопросы

В вопросах открытого типа порядок слов такой же, только в начало предложения необходимо добавить вопросительное слово. Тогда структура предложения будет следующая: вопросительное слово – вспомогательный/модальный глагол – подлежащее – сказуемое.

Перечислим вопросительные слова: what (что?, какой?), who (кто?), where (где?, куда?), why (почему?, зачем?), how (как?), when (когда?), which (который?), whose (чей?), whom (кого?, кому?).

He was at work on Monday. — В понедельник он весь день был на работе.
Where was he on Monday? — Где он был в понедельник?

She went to the cinema yesterday. — Она вчера ходила в кино.
Where did she go yesterday? — Куда она вчера ходила?

My father watches Netflix every day. — Мой отец каждый день смотрит Netflix.
How often does your father watch Netflix? — Как часто твой отец смотрит Netflix?

Вопросы к подлежащему

В английском есть такой тип вопросов, как вопросы к подлежащему. У них порядок слов такой же, как и в утвердительных предложениях, только в начале будет стоять вопросительное слово вместо подлежащего. Сравните:

Who do you love? — Кого ты любишь? (подлежащее you)
Who loves you? — Кто тебя любит? (подлежащее who)

Whose phone did she find two days ago? — Чей телефон она вчера нашла? (подлежащее she)
Whose phone is ringing? — Чей телефон звонит? (подлежащее whose phone)

What have you done? — Что ты наделал? (подлежащее you)
What happened? — Что случилось? (подлежащее what)

Обратите внимание! После вопросительных слов who и what необходимо использовать глагол в единственном числе.

Who lives in this mansion? — Кто живет в этом особняке?
What makes us human? — Что делает нас людьми?

Косвенные вопросы

Если вам нужно что-то узнать и вы хотите звучать более вежливо, то можете начать свой вопрос с таких фраз, как: Could you tell me… ? (Можете подсказать… ?), Can you please help… ? (Можете помочь… ?) Далее задавайте вопрос, но используйте прямой порядок слов.

Could you tell me where is the post office is? — Не могли бы вы мне подсказать, где находится почта?
Do you know what time does the store opens? — Вы знаете, во сколько открывается магазин?

Если в косвенный вопрос мы трансформируем вопрос типа «да/нет», то перед вопросительной частью нам понадобится частица «ли» — if или whether.

Do you like action films? — Тебе нравятся боевики?
I wonder if/whether you like action films. — Мне интересно узнать, нравятся ли тебе экшн-фильмы.

Другие члены предложения

Прилагательное в английском стоит перед существительным, а наречие обычно — в конце предложения.

Grace Kelly was a beautiful woman. — Грейс Келли была красивой женщиной.
Andy reads well. — Энди хорошо читает.

Обстоятельство, как правило, стоит в конце предложения. Оно отвечает на вопросы как?, где?, куда?, почему?, когда?

There was no rain last summer. — Прошлым летом не было дождя.
The town hall is in the city center. — Администрация находится в центре города.

Если в предложении несколько обстоятельств, то их надо ставить в следующем порядке:

Подлежащее + сказуемое	Обстоятельство (как?)	Обстоятельство (где?)	Обстоятельство (когда?)	Перевод
Fergie didn’t perform	very well	at the concert	two years ago.	Ферги не очень хорошо выступила на концерте два года назад.

Чтобы подчеркнуть, когда или где что-то случилось, мы можем поставить обстоятельство места или времени в начало предложения:

Last Christmas I gave you my heart. But the very next day you gave it away. This year, to save me from tears, I’ll give it to someone special. — Прошлым Рождеством я подарил тебе свое сердце. Но уже на следующий день ты отдала его обратно. В этом году, чтобы больше не горевать, я подарю его кому-нибудь другому.

Если вы хотите преодолеть языковой барьер и начать свободно общаться с иностранцами, записывайтесь на разговорный курс английского.

Надеемся, эта статья была вам полезной и вы разобрались, как строить предложения в английском языке. Предлагаем пройти небольшой тест для закрепления темы.

A grammatical sentence is more than just the sum of its parts: as well as the particular words you use, you have to order them correctly. If you do this, you can be confident your written work will be clear and easy to read.

Failure to get your words order in order, on the other hand, may detract from the flow of your writing and lose you valuable marks. Thankfully, the basics of word order are pretty easy to remember with the term ‘SVO’.

Subject, Verb and Object (SVO)

The minimum required for a grammatical sentence is a subject (i.e. the active person or thing in the sentence) followed by a verb (i.e. the thing being done):

In the above, the subject is ‘Steve’ and the verb is ‘dances’. Reversing the word order here (‘Dances Steve’) wouldn’t make sense.

Most sentences, including any sentence with a transitive verb, also require an object. This is the thing being acted upon and should come after the verb:

Here, the subject (‘Sally’) acts upon (‘kicks’) the object (‘the ball’). Any order other than subject + verb + object would be ungrammatical without adding extra words.

Indirect Objects

If you’re now feeling braver about word order, you might be ready to tackle indirect objects too. An indirect object is the thing that receives the direct object in a sentence, such as:

In this case, ‘Jimmy’ is the subject, ‘gave’ is the verb, ‘the present’ is the object, and ‘his grandad’ is the indirect object. As you can see, when following a preposition like ‘to’, the indirect object comes after the object.

However, if the preposition is omitted from the sentence, the indirect object should come before the object (i.e. subject + verb + indirect object + object):

This distinction is important, so it’s always worth checking whether your sentence contains a preposition if you’re unsure about word order.

Summary of Sentence Structure

As mentioned, the basic word order for a grammatical sentence is captured in the initialism SVO:

Subject + Verb + Object

This is complicated slightly if the sentence includes an indirect object, as the correct word order depends upon whether or not you’re using a preposition. If you are using a preposition, the correct order is:

Subject + Verb + Object + Indirect Object

If the preposition is omitted, the sentence should be ordered:

Subject + Verb + Indirect Object + Object

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.

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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.)

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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.

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See also

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

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Notes

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References

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Further reading

Source of the article : Wikipedia

The
words in an English sentence are arranged in a certain order which is
fixed for every type of sentence and is, therefore, meaningful. There
exist two ways of arranging words—direct order and inverted order.

Word
order fulfils various functions. The two main functions of word order
are grammatical and communicative. The essence of the grammatical
principle lies in the fact that the sentence position of an element
is determined by its syntactic function. The
communicative
principle manifests itself in that the sentence position of an
element varies depending on its communicative value.

Direct
word Order

The
most common pattern for the arrangement of the main parts in a
declarative sentence is Subject-Predicate-(Object), which is called
direct word order.

I
promise to respect your wishes.

Direct
word order is also employed in pronominal questions to the subject or
its attribute.

Who
told you where I was?

Direct
word order allows of a few variations in the fixed pattern, but only
for the secondary parts.

End—Focus
and End-Weight

Inappropriate
word order may lead to incoherence, clumsy style and lack of clarity.
So when you are deciding in which order to place the ideas in a
sentence, there are two useful guiding principles to remember:

• End-focus:
  the new or most important idea in a piece of information should be
  placed towards the end, where in speech nuclear stress normally
  falls. A sentence is generally more effective (especially in
  writing) if the main point is saved up to the end.

Babies
prefer sleeping on their back.

• End-weight:
  the more “weighty” part(s) of a sentence should be placed
  towards the end. Otherwise the sentence may sound awkward and
  unbalanced. The “weight” of an element can be defined in terms
  of length(e.g. number of syllables) or in terms of grammatical
  complexity (number of modifiers). Structures with introductory it
  and there, for instance, allow to avoid having a long subject, and
  to put what you are taking about in a more prominent position at the
  end of the sentence.

It
becomes hard for a child to develop a sense of identity. There is
grief in his face and reproach at the injustice of it all.

Connected
with the principle of end-weight in English is the feeling that the
predicate of a sentence should be longer or grammatically more
complex than the subject. This helps to explain why English native
speakers tend to avoid predicates consisting of just a single
intransitive verb. Instead of saying Mary sang , they would probably
prefer to say Mary sang a song , filling the object position with a
noun phrase which adds little information but helps to give more
weight to the predicate.

For
such a purpose English often uses a general verb( such as have, take,
give and do ) followed by an abstract noun phrase:

He
is having a swim.—-He is swimming.

He
took a rest.——He rested.

He
does little work.—-He works little.

The
sentences on the left are more idiomatic than on the right and they
contribute to the impression of fluency in English given by a foreign
user.

Order
and Emphasis

English
grammar has quite a number of sentence processes which help to
arrange the message for the right order and the right emphasis.
Because of the principle of end-focus and end- weight, the final
position in a sentence or clause is, in neutral circumstances, the
most important.

But
the first position is also important for communication, because it is
the starting point for what the speaker wants to say: it is (so to
speak) the part of the sentence which is familiar territory in which
the hearer gets his bearings. Therefore the first element in a
sentence or clause is called the TOPIC (or THEME). In most
statements, the topic is the subject of the sentence.

Instead
of the subject, you may make another element the topic by moving it
to the front of the sentence( fronted topic). This shift, which is
called fronting, gives the element a kind of psychological
prominence, and has three different effects:

1. In
   informal conversation it is quite common for a speaker to front an
   element(particularly a complement) and give it nuclear stress:

An
utter fool I felt, too. (topic-complement).

Excellent
food the serve here. (topic-object).

1. Fronting
   also helps to point dramatically to a contrast between two things
   mentioned in the neighbouring sentences or clauses, which often have
   parallel structure:

Rich
I may be, but that doesn’t mean I am happy. (topic-complement).

His
face I am not fond of, but his character I despise.(topic-object)

Willingly
he’ll never do it, he’ll have to be forced. (topic-adverbial of
manner)

1. The
   word this or these is often present in the fronted topic, showing
   that it contains given information. This type of fronting is found
   in more formal, especially written English and serves the function
   of linking the sentence to the previous text.

This
subject we have examined in an earlier chapter, and need not
reconsider (topic-object)

Besides
fronting there are other ways of giving prominence to this or that
part of the sentence.

*cleft
sentences (it-type)

The
cleft sentence construction with emphatic it is useful for putting
focus (usually for contrast)on a particular part of a sentence
expressed by a noun (group) ,a prepositional phrase, and an adverb of
time or place, or even by a clause.

It
was from France that she first heard the news.

Perhaps
it’s because he’s a misfit that I get along with him.

*cleft
sentences(wh-type)

What
he’s done is –spoil the whole thing.

—to
spoil the whole thing.

—spoilt
the whole thing.

Wh-clefts
can also be used to highlight a subject complement. Instead of Jean
and Bob are stingy, we can say: What Jean and Bob are is stingy! This
pattern is used when we want to express our opinion of something or
somebody.

What
we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not
knowledge in pursuit of the child. (G.B.Shaw)

*Wh-clauses
with demonstratives

It
is a common type of sentence in English which is similar to wh-cleft
sentences.

This
is how you start the engine.

*Auxiliary
DO

You
can emphasize a statement by putting do, does , or did in front of
the base form of the verb.

I
do feel sorry for Roger.

But
it goes move.(G.Galilei).

*The
passive

Passive
constructions vary the way information is given in a sentence. The
passive can be used:

—for
end-focus

Who
makes these chairs?—They’re made by Ercol.

—for
end-weight where the subject is a clause

I
was astonished that he was prepared to give me a job. (Better than:
That he was prepared to give me a job astonished me.)

—for
emphasis on what comes first

All
roads to the north have been blocked by snow.

The
other common pattern of word order is the inversion. There are 2
types of inversion:

• Subject-verb
  inversion

Brightly
shone the moon that night…

• Subject-operator/
  auxiliary inversion

Seldom
can there have been such a happy meeting.

Sometimes
the inversion may be taken as a normal order of words in
constructions with special communicative value, and is devoid of any
special colouring.

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