Marked word order examples

Natural/Unmarked Word Order

Some major points from the Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English chapter 12, from which are taken* the examples…

Discourse Factors
Inside the house Mr Summers found a family of cats shut in the bathroom.

Information flows from given (the house and Mr Summers) to new in a sentence. Typically, the focus is on the last lexical item (bathroom). But there are also techniques to front information to also make it the focus (the adverbial Inside the house). Another technique is to front the verb complement: Brilliant that was!

The end-weight principle prefers that the long and complex (i.e. heavier) elements placed toward the end ofthhe sentence. This is easier for readers and listeners to process. If placed at the beginning it would become a second focus of the sentence.

Word Order Techniques

• Fronting
• Inversion
• Existential there
• Dislocation
• Clefting

«Fronting means placing in intitial positiona a clause element that is normally found after the verb.» One can front:

• object — This I do not understand.
• other nominals — Whether Nancy was there or not, she could not be certain.
• predicatives — Far more serious were the severe head injuries.
• non-finite constructions — I have said he would come down and come down he did.
• in dependent clauses using as or though — Try as she might …

Inversion places the verb phrase (full) or the operator (partial) before the subject. This can also take place in a dependent clause.

• full inversion — Best of all would be to get a job in Wellingham.
• partial inversion — Not before in our history have so many strong influences united to produce so large a disaster.
• dependent clause — …beside it was a wooden seat on which sat two men talking.

One of my favs, the existential there helps to communicate the state of existence or occurance of something. The typical form is: there + be + noun phrase (+ adverbial). Note that this there is different from the adverbial there (i.e. here).
There‘s a bear sitting in the corner. 
There‘s still no water there or here or anywhere.

Spoken language also uses dislocation, which repeats a noun phrase with a proxy pronoun.
This little shop it‘s lovely.
I think

he

‘s getting hooked on the tast of Vaseline, that dog.

Clefting also breaks up a clause into two clauses each with its own verb.
It’s a man I want. <compare: I want a man.>

Word order	English equivalent	Proportion of languages	Example languages
SOV	«Cows grass eat.»	45%		Ancient Greek, Bengali, Burmese, Hindi/Urdu, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Persian, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Turkish, etc
SVO	«Cows eat grass.»	42%		Chinese, English, French, Hausa, Italian, Malay, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, Thai, Vietnamese, etc
VSO	«Eat cows grass.»	9%		Biblical Hebrew, Classical Arabic, Filipino, Irish, Māori, Tuareg-Berber, Welsh
VOS	«Eat grass cows.»	3%		Car, Fijian, Malagasy, Qʼeqchiʼ, Terêna
OVS	«Grass eat cows.»	1%		Hixkaryana, Urarina
OSV	«Grass cows eat.»	0%		Tobati, Warao
Frequency distribution of word order in languages surveyed by Russell S. Tomlin in the 1980s[1][2] ( v t e )

In linguistic typology, object–subject–verb (OSV) or object–agent–verb (OAV) is a classification of languages, based on whether the structure predominates in pragmatically neutral expressions.
An example of this would be «Oranges Sam ate.»

Unmarked word orderEdit

Natural languagesEdit

OSV is rarely used in unmarked sentences, which use a normal word order without emphasis. Most languages that use OSV as their default word order come from the Amazon basin, such as Xavante, Jamamadi, Apurinã, Warao, Kayabí and Nadëb.^[3] Here is an example from Apurinã:^[3]

British Sign Language (BSL) normally uses topic–comment structure, but its default word order when topic–comment structure is not used is OSV.

Marked word orderEdit

Various languages allow OSV word order but only in marked sentences, which emphasise part or all of the sentence.

ArabicEdit

Classical Arabic is generally VSO but allows OSV in marked sentences (ones using traditional Arabic declension). For example, Verse 5 of Al-Fatiha reads:

إياك نعبد وإياك نستعين.

You alone we worship, and You alone we ask for help.

The construction is less used in Modern Standard Arabic, which tends not to use marked sentences, and is generally absent in the colloquial varieties of Arabic, which are generally not declined and tend to observe strict SVO order.

ChineseEdit

Passive constructions in Chinese follow an OSV (OAV) pattern through the use of the particle 被:

The orange experienced me eating it.

FinnishEdit

Finnish has a remarkably lax word order^[4] and so emphasis on the object is often marked simply by putting it first in the sentence.^[5] An example would be «Sinua minä rakastan!», which word by word would be in English «you I love!» and which expresses a contrast to maybe loving someone else. This word order is totally natural and quite often used for emphasis. Another example would be «Suklaata se kyllä suostuu syömään», or word by word «Chocolate he/she/they(sg.) instead consents to-eat», which expresses the contrast of refusing to eat something else (like something more healthy).

HebrewEdit

In Modern Hebrew, OSV is often used instead of the normal SVO to emphasise the object. אני אוהב אותה would mean «I love her», but «אותה אני אוהב» would mean «It is she whom I love».^[6] Possibly an influence of Germanic (via Yiddish), as Jewish English uses a similar construction («You, I like, kid») much more than many other varieties of English and often with the «it is» left implicit.

HungarianEdit

In Hungarian, OSV emphasises the subject:

A szócikket én szerkesztettem = The article/I/edited (It was I, not somebody else, who edited the article).

Korean and JapaneseEdit

Korean and Japanese have SOV by default, but since they are topic-prominent languages, they often seem to be OSV when the object is topicalized. Here is an example in Korean:

그 사과는 제가 먹었어요.

사과–는

sagwa-neun

apple-TOP

Object

먹–었–어–요

meog-eoss-eo-yo

eat-PST—DEC—POL

Verb

As for the apple, I eat it. (or) The apple, I eat.

An almost identical syntax is possible in Japanese:

そのりんごは私が食べました。

りんご゠は

ringo-wa

apple-TOP

Object

私゠が

watashi-ga

I.POL—NOM

Subject

食べ゠まし゠た

tabe-mashi-ta

eat-POL—PST/PERF

Verb

As for the apple, I ate it. (or) The apple, I ate.

MalayalamEdit

OSV is one of the permissible word orders in Malayalam, the other being SOV.

NahuatlEdit

OSV emphasizes the object in Nahuatl.^[7]

niquintlazohtla

I-them-love

It is the women whom I love.

PortugueseEdit

OSV is possible in Portuguese to emphasize the object.

De maçã eu não gosto

I do not like apple

TurkishEdit

OSV is used in Turkish to emphasize the subject:

Yemeği ben pişirdim.

pişir-di-m

cook-PST—1SG

Verb

It was I, not somebody else, who cooked the meal.

See alsoEdit

• Subject–object–verb
• Subject–verb–object
• Object–verb–subject
• Verb–object–subject
• Verb–subject–object
• Yoda, a popular Star Wars character who speaks in a rare object–subject–verb order
• Yoda conditions — a style of writing conditionals in computer programming languages

ReferencesEdit

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.

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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]

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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

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]