Word order meaning examples

1. What is Word Order?

Word order is important: it’s what makes your sentences make sense! So, proper word order is an essential part of writing and speaking—when we put words in the wrong order, the result is a confusing, unclear, and an incorrect sentence.

2.Examples of Word Order

Here are some examples of words put into the correct and incorrect order:

I have 2 brothers and 2 sisters at home. CORRECT

2 brothers and 2 sisters have I at home. INCORRECT

I am in middle school. CORRECT

In middle school I am. INCORRECT

How are you today? CORRECT

You are how today? INCORRECT

As you can see, it’s usually easy to see whether or not your words are in the correct order. When words are out of order, they stand out, and usually change the meaning of a sentence or make it hard to understand.

3. Types of Word Order

In English, we follow one main pattern for normal sentences and one main pattern for sentences that ask a question.

a. Standard Word Order

A sentence’s standard word order is Subject + Verb + Object (SVO). Remember, the subject is what a sentence is about; so, it comes first. For example:

The dog (subject) + eats (verb) + popcorn (object).

The subject comes first in a sentence because it makes our meaning clear when writing and speaking. Then, the verb comes after the subject, and the object comes after the verb; and that’s the most common word order. Otherwise, a sentence doesn’t make sense, like this:

Eats popcorn the dog. (verb + object + subject)

Popcorn the dog eats. (object + subject + verb)

B. Questions

When asking a question, we follow the order auxiliary verb/modal auxiliary + subject + verb (ASV). Auxiliary verbs and modal auxiliaries share meaning or function, many which are forms of the verb “to be.” Auxiliary verbs can change form, but modal auxiliaries don’t. Here’s a chart to help you:

As said, questions follow the form ASV; or, if they have an object, ASVO. Here are some examples:

Can he cook?  “Can” (auxiliary) “he” (subject) “cook” (verb)

Does your dog like popcorn?  “Does” (A) “your dog” (S) “like” (V) “popcorn” (O)

Are you burning the popcorn? “Are” (A) “you” (S) “burning” (V) “popcorn” (O)

4. Parts of Word Order

While almost sentences need to follow the basic SVO word order, we add other words, like indirect objects and modifiers, to make them more detailed.

a. Indirect Objects

When we add an indirect object, a sentence will follow a slightly different order. Indirect objects always come between the verb and the object, following the pattern SVIO, like this:

I fed the dog some popcorn.

This sentence has “I” (subject) “fed” (verb) “dog” (indirect object) “popcorn” (direct object).

b. Prepositional Phrases

Prepositional phrases also have special positions in sentences. When we use the prepositions like “to” or “for,” then the indirect object becomes part of a prepositional phrase, and follows the order SVOP, like this:

I fed some popcorn to the dog.

Other prepositional phrases, determining time and location, can go at either the beginning or the end of a sentence:

            He ate popcorn at the fair.      -Or-     At the fair he ate popcorn.

      In the morning I will go home.            I will go home in the morning.

c. Adverbs

Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs, adding things like time, manner, degree; and often end in ly, like “slowly,” “recently,” “nearly,” and so on. As a rule, an adverb (or any modifier) should be as close as possible to the thing it is modifying. But, adverbs are special because they can usually be placed in more than one spot in the sentence and are still correct. So, there are rules about their placement, but also many exceptions.

In general, when modifying an adjective or adverb, an adverb should go before the word it modifies:

The dog was extremely hungry. CORRECT adverb modifies “hungry”

Extremely, the dog was hungry. INCORRECT misplaced adverb

The extremely dog was hungry. INCORRECT misplaced adverb

The dog was hungry extremely. INCORRECT misplaced adverb

As you can see, the word “extremely” only makes sense just before the adjective “hungry.” In this situation, the adverb can only go in one place.

When modifying a verb, an adverb should generally go right after the word it modifies, as in the first sentence below. BUT, these other uses are also correct, though they may not be the best:

The dog ran quickly to the fair. CORRECT * BEST POSITION

Quickly the dog ran to the fair. CORRECT

The dog quickly ran to the fair. CORRECT

The dog ran to the fair quickly. CORRECT

For adverbs expressing frequency (how often something happens) the adverb goes directly after the subject:

The dog always eats popcorn.

He never runs slowly.

I rarely see him.

Adverbs expressing time (when something happens) can go at either the beginning or of the end of the sentence, depending what’s important about the sentence. If the time isn’t very important, then it goes at the beginning of the sentence, but if you want to emphasize the time, then the adverb goes at the end of the sentence:

Now the dog wants popcorn. Emphasis on “the dog wants popcorn”

The dog wants popcorn now. Emphasis on “now”

5. How to Use Avoid Mistakes with Word Order

Aside from following the proper SVO pattern, it’s important to write and speak in the way that is the least confusing and the most clear. If you make mistakes with your word order, then your sentences won’t make sense. Basically, if a sentence is hard to understand, then it isn’t correct. Here are a few key things to remember:

• The subject is what a sentence is about, so it should come first.
• A modifier (like an adverb) should generally go as close as possible to the thing it is modifying.
• Indirect objects can change the word order from SVO to SVIO
• Prepositional phrases have special positions in sentences

Finally, here’s an easy tip: when writing, always reread your sentences out loud to make sure that the words are in the proper order—it is usually pretty easy to hear! If a sentence is clear, then you should only need to read it once to understand it.

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]

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Word order is part of syntax, which is part of grammar. Word order may be different in different languages. For example, English «I play tennis only sometimes» would be in German Ich spiele nur manchmal Tennis, literally «I play only sometimes tennis». In Norwegian, the same sentence would be Jeg spiller bare tennis noen ganger («I play tennis only sometimes»).

In Portuguese, the sentence could be Eu só jogo tênis algumas vezes («I only play tennis sometimes), but word order can be changed to Eu jogo tênis só algumas vezes («I play tennis only sometimes»). However, Eu jogo só tênis algumas vezes is not allowed («I play only tennis sometimes») because the meaning would be changed.

Subject-verb-object[change | change source]

In English, a simple sentence with a verb (an action), subject (who or what is doing the action), and an object (to whom or what the action is done) is written with a subject-verb-object word order (SVO). For example, in the sentence «Robert opens the door», «Robert» is the subject, «opens» is the verb and «door» is the object. SVO is the second-most common word order among all languages and is used in 42% of them.^[1] Examples are Mandarin Chinese, Bahasa Melayu, Bahasa Indonesia, Spanish, French, Italian, Thai and Vietnamese. While some of the above languages can use other word orders, such as SOV and VSO, they use SVO for the simplest sentences.

In other languages, sentences can use other word orders. Consider Robert opens the door. In English, changing the word order to «The door opens Robert» would change the meaning of the sentence. In Latin, however, Robertus ianuam aperit and ianuam Robertus aperit mean the same. Ianuam is in the accusative case and so it is the direct object and Robertus the subject. Changing the cases of the words, however, to Robertem ianua aperit would change the meaning of the sentence: ianua is now in the nominative case and so it is the subject and Robertum the object.

Subject-object-verb[change | change source]

The subject-object-verb (SOV) word order is the one that is used by the greatest number of distinct languages, 45% of them.^[1] It is especially common in the theoretical language family that is known as the Altaic language family, which includes many languages such as Japanese, Korean, Mongolian and the Turkic languages.

In Japanese, for example, a simple sentence uses SOV. In other words, the sentence «Robert opens the door» becomes «Robert the door opens». Such languages often use postpositions, which act like prepositions but appear after content words rather than before them, to show the role of a word in the sentence. The sample sentence «Robert opens the door» would be in Japanese ロバートはドアを開ける Robāto-wa doa-o akeru in which は wa as in ロバートは Robāto-wa shows that ロバート Robāto (Robert) is the topic of the sentence, and を o as in ドアを doa-o shows that ドア doa is the direct object of the sentence. Around 45% of all languages are SOV languages.^[1]

Verb-subject-object[change | change source]

The verb-subject-object (VSO) word order is the third-most common word order in world languages. There are far fewer VSO languages than SVO and SOV languages, and only 9% of them are VSO.^[1] Language groups in which VSO is common include Afroasiatic languages, such as Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic, and Celtic languages, such as Irish, Welsh and Cornish. In VSO languages, «Robert opens the door» would be «Opens Robert the door». Spanish sentences are usually SVO, but VSO is also common. In Spanish, the example above can be as Roberto abre la puerta (Robert opens the door) or Abre Roberto la puerta (Opens Robert the door).

Other types[change | change source]

Aside from SVO, SOV, and VSO, other kinds of word orders are rather uncommon. VOS word order makes up at around 3% of all languages, and languages that begin with the object (OVS and OSV) are extremely few, each around 1-0% percent each.^[1]

References[change | change source]

In English, the word order is strict. That means we can’t place parts of the sentence wherever we want, but we should follow some certain rules when making sentences. These rules apply not only to formal language but also to everyday spoken English. So, we should learn and always follow them.

Direct word order and inversion

When the sentence is positive (affirmative), the word order is direct. That means the verb follows the subject.

In questions (interrogative sentences) the subject and the verb swap places. We call it indirect word order, or inversion.

If there is an auxiliary verb, its first word will precede the subject.

Direct and indirect objects

The object normally goes right after the verb. We don’t put any other words between them.

In the examples above, the object is direct. A direct object answers the question «whom» or «what» and there is no preposition after the verb. If we can’t put the object without a preposition (talk to smb, agree with smb, rely on smb), the object is indirect.

Now, if we have two objects, one is indirect and the other is direct, then the direct object has the priority to go first.

If there are two direct objects and one of them is a pronoun, the pronoun goes behind the verb.

Place and time

Expressions of time and place usually go together after the verb and the object (if there is one). We first indicate the place (where, where to) and then the time (when, how often, how long).

lt is often possible to put time at the beginning of the sentence.

Summary

Let’s briefly sum up the rules:

1. Positive sentence: subject + verb. Question sentence: verb + subject
2. Do not split the verb and the object
3. Direct objects go before the indirect objects
4. If one of two direct objects is a pronoun, it goes first
5. Place goes before time