Word order in languages

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]

1. Six types with dominant order

This map shows the ordering of subject, object, and verb in a transitive clause, more specifically declarative clauses in which both the subject and object involve a noun (and not just a pronoun), as in the English sentence in (1). 

(1) 

[The dog]	chased	[the cat].
S	V	O

English is SVO (Subject-Verb-Object), because the subject the dog  in (1) precedes the verb while the object the cat  follows the verb.

There are six logically possible orders of the three elements S, O, and V, as shown in the feature-value table. 

All six of these types are attested; examples of each type are given in (2). 

(2) 

Although all six of these orders are attested, the last two types, OVS and OSV, in which the object comes first, are rare. 

The terms subject  and object  are used here in a rather informal semantic sense, to denote the more agent-like and more patient-like elements respectively. Their use here can be defined in terms of the notions S, A, and P, where the S is the single argument in an intransitive clause, the A is the more agent-like argument in a transitive clause, and the P is the more patient-like argument in a transitive clause. For the purposes of this map, then, the term subject  is used for the A while the term object  is used for the P. A language shown on the map as SOV could thus also be equally well and perhaps more accurately described as APV. Note that many linguists use the terms subject  and object  somewhat differently from this, and some linguists question the applicability of these terms to some languages, but these issues do not arise with the use of these terms here. For example, there is controversy surrounding the question of what ought to be considered the subject in Philippine languages, like Cebuano (cf. Schachter 1976). Cebuano has two common ways to express transitive clauses, one of which is illustrated in (3).

(3) Cebuano (Austronesian; own data) 

gi-palit	[sa	babayi]	[ang	saging]
goal.foc-buy	nontop	woman	top	banana
‘The woman bought the bananas.’

While there is a question as to which of the two arguments in (3) should be considered a subject (or whether neither or both should), in both types of clauses the verb normally comes first, followed by the A, and then the P.  Hence, by the use of subject  and object  assumed for this map, Cebuano is treated as a VSO language.

Note that while the position of the subject in intransitive clauses is generally the same as in transitive clauses, in some languages this is not the case. See Chapter 82.

Some languages can be assigned straightforwardly to one of the six types, because all orders other than one are either ungrammatical or used relatively infrequently and only in special pragmatic contexts.  Such languages can be said to have rigid order. There are many other languages in which all six orders are grammatical.  Such languages can be said to have flexible order. Flexible order languages are sometimes described as having “free” word order, though this is misleading, since there are often pragmatic factors governing the choice of word order.

We can further distinguish two subtypes of languages with flexible word order. In some languages with flexible order, there is one order which is most common and which can be described as the dominant order. In other flexible order languages, the flexibility is greater and there is no one order that is the dominant order in terms of frequency of usage or pragmatic neutrality. Flexible order languages in which one order is dominant are shown on the map according to that dominant order – in other words, the map does not distinguish rigid order languages from flexible order languages with a dominant order. Flexible order languages lacking a dominant order are shown on the map as “lacking a dominant word order”. Russian is an example of a language with flexible word order in which SVO order can be considered dominant, so Russian is shown on the map as SVO. See “Determining Dominant Word Order”.

There are a number of different subtypes of languages lacking a dominant order which are not distinguished on the map. In some languages with highly flexible word order, all or most orders of subject, object, and verb will be possible and common. Nunggubuyu (Gunwinyguan; northern Australia) is an example of such a language (Heath 1984: 507-513; 1986). But some languages lack a dominant order only because just the subject or just the object exhibits flexibility with respect to the verb.  For example, Syrian Arabic allows both SVO and VSO orders and there does not seem to be a reason (at least on the basis of the description by Cowell 1964: 407, 411) to consider one of them dominant. However, only these two orders are common and the order of verb and object is relatively inflexible.

A third subtype of language lacking a dominant order consists of languages in which different word orders occur but the choice is syntactically determined. For example, in German and Dutch, the dominant order is SVO in main clauses lacking an auxiliary and SOV in subordinate clauses and clauses containing an auxiliary (see below for examples). Because this results in both orders being common, neither order is considered dominant here and these two languages are shown on the map as lacking a dominant word order. In general, if the word order varies according to whether there is an auxiliary verb, the language is shown on the map as lacking a dominant order. Another language whose word order depends both on whether there is an auxiliary and whether the clause is a main clause is Dinka (Nilotic; Sudan): like German, the order is SVO in main clauses without an auxiliary, SAuxOV in main clauses with an auxiliary, but it is VSO in subordinate clauses without an auxiliary and AuxSOV in subordinate clauses with an auxiliary (Nebel 1948: 9, 25, 42, 75, 82).

Where languages differ in their order between main clauses and subordinate clauses, the order in main clauses is used to classify them on this map. For example, Quileute (Chimakuan; Washington State) is VSO in main clauses and SVO in subordinate clauses (Andrade 1933: 278), and is shown on the map as VSO. In some languages, word order is more fixed in subordinate clauses. For example, in Miya (Chadic; Nigeria), while both SVO and VOS are found in main clauses, only VOS order is found in adverbial subordinate clauses and relative clauses (Schuh 1998: 281, 291); because both SVO and VOS are common in main clauses, Miya is shown on the map as lacking a dominant order.

2. Geographical distribution of the dominant-order types

The most frequent of the six orders is SOV and it is widely distributed across the globe. Perhaps the most striking region in which SOV predominates is an area covering most of Asia, except in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. It is also overwhelmingly the dominant order in New Guinea, most of the exceptions being along the north coast. It is the most common order among languages in Australia which have a dominant order at all, although even in languages in which SOV is dominant, the order is generally flexible. It is clearly the dominant order in North America outside of the Pacific Northwest and Mesoamerica. 

The map shows three areas where SVO order predominates: (i) an area covering much of sub-Saharan Africa, though with a scattering of SOV and VSO languages; (ii) an area extending from China and southeast Asia south into the Austronesian languages of Indonesia and the western Pacific; and (iii) Europe and around the Mediterranean.  SVO order is not common outside these areas.

VSO order is scattered around various parts of the world, in eastern Africa (among various Eastern Sudanic languages), in North Africa (Berber), in the western extremes of Europe (Celtic), in and around the Philippines, among Polynesian languages of the Pacific, in Mesoamerica, and in the Pacific Northwest. VOS order is also scattered around the globe, though there are no attested instances on the mainland of Africa or Eurasia. 

There are nine OVS languages on the map, six of which are spoken in South America, five in the Amazon basin, and one (Selknam) in Tierra del Fuego. There are only four OSV languages shown: Warao in Venezuela, Nadëb in Brazil, Wik Ngathana in northeastern Australia, and Tobati in West Papua, Indonesia. Languages without a dominant order are especially common in North America and Australia, and to a lesser extent in South America. The scattering of this type partly reflects the fact that this is not a homogeneous type, since it mixes languages with highly flexible order with languages which have more rigid order but where there are two dominant orders. The former type, languages with highly flexible order, is most common in North America and Australia and relatively uncommon in Africa, Europe, Asia, New Guinea and among Austronesian languages. 

The map in figure 1 shows the distribution of word order in various languages of the past, though the times at which these languages were spoken vary from 4500 years ago to 1000 years ago. The map illustrates the fact that SVO, now a common order in Europe and around the Mediterranean, was less common in the past: on the one hand, there were SOV languages like Latin and Etruscan in western Europe; on the other hand, there were many VSO languages in what is now the Middle East, represented both by Semitic languages and by Egyptian.

3. Languages with two primary alternating orders

Map 81B shows languages where it is not possible to identify a single dominant order but in which it is possible to identify two orders, neither of which is dominant relative to the other, but which can be said to be dominant relative to other orders.

Type 1 represents languages which are SOV/SVO, i.e. languages in which the orders SOV and SVO are common relative to other orders, but where neither order is dominant relative to the other. An example of a language of this type is German, as illustrated in (4).

(4) German

a.	Der	Lehrer	trink-t	das	Wasser.
	def	teacher	drink-3sg	def	water
	‘The teacher is drinking the water.’
b.	Der	Lehrer	ha-t	das	Wasser	getrunken.
	def	teacher	have-3sg	def	water	drink:past.ptcpl
	‘The teacher has drunk the water.’

Note that at the level of grammar, German is simply verb-second, placing the inflected verb second, and when the inflected verb is an auxiliary verb, the main verb occurs at the end of the clause. Thus when the inflected verb is the main verb, it is possible to get OVS order, or VSO order if an adverb or prepositional phrase precedes the verb, but SVO is apparently more common than these. Type 1 is the most common of the types on this map; this most likely is related to the fact that SOV and SVO are by far the two most common types among the six possible orders of subject, object, and verb on Map 81A.

Type 2 represents languages which are SVO/VSO. The fact that there are half as many languages of this type compared to SOV/SVO languages while there are more than five times as many SOV as VSO languages means that the ratio of SVO/VSO to VSO is higher than the ratio of SOV/SVO to SOV. In other words, the frequency of Type 2 is greater than we might expect. The high number of Type 2 languages relates to Universal 6 of Greenberg (1963): “All languages with dominant VSO order have SVO as an alternative or as the only alternative basic order”. Although there may be exceptions to Greenberg’s universal, the fact that VSO languages generally allow SVO as an alternate word order makes it unsurprising that we would find many SVO/VSO languages. A number of the Type 2 languages occur in genealogical groups that also contain VSO languages, such as Berber, Semitic, and various subgroups of Austronesian.

Type 3 languages represent languages which are VSO/VOS. This is the second-most frequent type on Map 81B and given the fact that neither of the two types it is based on are among the two more frequent orders SOV and SVO, this type is considerably more frequent than one might otherwise expect.

Type 4 represents languages which are SVO/VOS, analogous to Type 2, except with VOS instead of VSO. Their high frequency despite the relative rarity of VOS languages is presumably analogous to the factors discussed above with respect to Type 2.

Type 5 represents languages which are SOV/OVS. The three languages in the sample of this type are Wichita (Caddoan; Oklahoma), Apalaí (Cariban; Brazil), and Macushi “Determining Dominant Word Order”. Note that a number of OVS languages are fairly rigidly OV, but allow SOV as a not infrequent alternate order, so that in some cases there may be a question as to whether a language should be classified as OVS or SOV/OVS.

Some languages are described as being verb-final with the order of subject and object pragmatically determined, suggesting that they are of a type SOV/OSV not shown on this map, such as Anamuxra (Madang; Papua New Guinea) (Ingram 2001) and Mekeo (Oceanic; Papua New Guinea) (Jones 1998a). While there may be some languages of this type, it has been my experience that when one counts the frequency of SOV and OSV order in texts for languages which are so described, SOV usually outnumbers OSV order by well over 2 to 1, and thus the language counts as SOV by the criteria assumed in this chapter (see “Determining Dominant Word Order”). In the absence of such text counts, such languages are shown on Maps 82A and 83A as SV and OV, but are not shown on this map, it being considered unknown whether they are SOV or SOV/OSV. I have yet to find a language where text counts show SOV and OSV occurring with comparable frequency and hence I have yet to find a language that I would classify as SOV/OSV.

Among the languages shown on Map 81B, there are some languages where the alternation between the two orders is apparently pragmatically governed while there are others where it is grammatically governed. German is a clear example of the latter sort. In fact, the languages where the alternation is grammatically governed are generally of Type 1. A number of languages (Nuer (Ethiopia and Sudan), Dinka (Sudan) both Nilotic languages, and Ngiti (Lendu; Democratic Republic of Congo)) employ the SOV order when there is an auxiliary, although in Nuer the auxiliary element is nonverbal. The Moru-Ma’di languages (represented here by Moru (Sudan), Avokaya (Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan), Logoti (Democratic Republic of Congo), Lugbara (Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda), and Ma’di (Sudan and Uganda)) have two constructions, a perfective/past construction and an imperfective/nonpast one, the former being SVO, the latter SOV, and when an auxiliary is employed in the SOV construction, the order is SAuxOV.

4. Theoretical discussion

While the feature shown on this map is perhaps the single most frequently cited typological feature of languages, it is now recognized that it represents a clause type that does not occur especially frequently in spoken language; it is more common that at least one of the two arguments of a transitive clause will be pronominal, and in many languages pronominal subjects are expressed by verbal affixes. It is argued by Dryer (1997) that a more useful typology is one based on two more basic features, whether the language is OV or VO and whether it is SV or VS;  these are shown on the next two maps, in Chapters 82 and 83. In addition, as noted above, the order in transitive clauses is not always the same as the order in intransitive clauses.  The feature shown on this map is also important in that many other features are predictable from it, at least statistically. Most of these features correlate more specifically with the order of object and verb (Greenberg 1963, Dryer 1992; see Chapters 95, 96, and 97). For a few features, SVO languages exhibit properties intermediate between those of SOV languages and those of verb-initial languages, though in general they are more similar to verb-initial languages (Dryer 1991).

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Word order, in linguistic typology, refers to the order in which words appear in sentences across different languages. 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. That word order is unmarked. That is, it contains no extra information to the listener. For example, English is SVO (subject-verb-object), as in I don’t know this but OSV is also possible: This I don’t know. This process is called topic-fronting (also topicalization) and is extremely common. OSV in English is a marked word order because it emphasises the object.

An example of OSV being used for emphasis:

A: I can’t see Alice.

B: What about Bill?

A: Bill I can see. (rather than I can see Bill)

Sentence word orders

These are all possible word orders for the subject, verb, and object in the order of most common to rarest:

• SOV languages include the prototypical Japanese, Turkish and Korean, as well as many others using this most common word order. Some, like Persian, have SOV normal word order but conform less to the general tendencies of other such languages.

• Verb-second, or V2, languages, such as Dutch, German, Swedish and Norwegian have SOV characteristics in subordinate clauses.

• SVO languages include English, French and Kiswahili.

• Chinese, while appearing to be an SVO language, has a topic-comment-based structure.

• VSO languages include Classical Arabic, the Insular Celtic languages and Hawai’ian.
• VOS languages include Fijian and Malagasy.
• OSV languages include Xavante.
• OVS languages include Hixkaryana.
• Others, such as Latin and Finnish have no «standard» word order (although in the case of both languages SOV is the most frequent word order), meaning that the sentence structure is extremely flexible.

It is not understood why word orders with the subject before the object are much more common than word orders with the object before the subject. It must be noted that in most languages there is the tendency to identify the subject with the topic (who or what is being talked about) and to place the topic at the beginning of the sentence so as to establish the context quickly.

Some languages can be said to have more than one basic word order. French is SVO, but it incorporates or cliticizes objective pronouns before the verb. This makes French SOV in some sentences. However, speaking of a language having a given word order is generally understood as a reference to the basic, unmarked, non-emphatic word order for sentences with constituents expressed by full nouns or noun phrases.

Phrase word orders and branching

Main article: Branching (linguistics)

There are several common correlations between sentence-level word order and phrase-level constituent order. For example, SOV languages generally put modifiers (adjectives and adverbs) before what they modify (nouns and verbs), and use postpositions. VSO languages tend to place modifiers after their heads, and use prepositions. For SVO languages, either order is possible.

For example, French (SVO) uses prepositions (dans la voiture, à gauche), and places adjectives after (une voiture grande). However, a small class of adjectives generally go before their heads. On the other hand, in English (also SVO) adjectives always go before nouns (a big car), and adverbs can go either way, but initially is more common (greatly improved).

Further Reading

• Syntactic and Paratactic Word Order Effects (PDF) Analysis of different types of word order variations across languages. Technical, but contains non-technical appendix.
• The Language Instinct — Good general introduction to linguistics.

This article incorporates text from Wikipedia, and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

For the original article please see the «external links» section.

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

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

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

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

Video Word order

Constituent word orders

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

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

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

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

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

Maps Word order

Functions of constituent word order

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

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

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

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

src: study.com

History of constituent word order

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

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

src: i.ytimg.com

Phrase word orders and branching

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

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

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

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

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

src: i.ytimg.com

Pragmatic word order

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

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

Hungarian

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

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

Portuguese

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

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

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

Latin

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

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

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

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

Albanian

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

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

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

Indo-Aryan languages

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

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

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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