In
linguistic typology,
subject-verb-object (
SVO) is a sentence structure where the
subject comes first, the
verb second, and the
object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant sequence of these elements. It is the second most common order found in the world, after
SOV, and together, they account for more than 75% of the world's languages. It is also the most common order developed in
Creole languages, suggesting that it may be somehow more initially 'obvious' to human psychology.
Bulgarian,
Chinese,
English,
Finnish,
Guaraní,
Hausa,
Indonesian,
Javanese,
Kashmiri,
Khmer,
Latvian,
Luganda,
Malay,
Polish,
Quiche,
Rotuman,
Russian,
Swahili,
Thai,
Vietnamese and
Yoruba are examples of languages that can follow an SVO pattern. The
Romance languages also follow SVO construction, except for certain constructions in many of them in which a pronoun functions as the object (e.g. French:
je t'aime or Spanish:
(yo) te amo, lit.
I you love). All of the
Scandinavian languages follow this order also but change to
VSO when asking a question.
Hebrew and
Arabic will occasionally use an SVO pattern with sentences with subject pronouns (e.g. Arabic: آنا آحبگ, Hebrew: אני אוהב אותך, lit. "I love you."). However the subject pronouns here are grammatically unnecessary and most other constructions suggest that both languages are VSO languages at their core. Other SVO languages, such as English, can also use an OSV structure in certain literary styles, such as poetry.
An example of SVO order in English is:
Andy ate oranges.
In this,
Andy is the subject,
ate is the verb,
oranges is the object.
Some languages are more complicated:
Russian allows all possible combinations SVO, OVS, SOV, OSV, VSO, VOS. Changing the word order influences the nuance of the meaning. Usually the last word in a sentence is emphasized. But other implications are possible. Varying word order is very common in
Russian. In Polish, a word/phrase can be brought to the front or, less commonly, put to the back of a sentence or clause to add emphasis e.g. "
Roweru ci nie kupię" (I won't buy you
a bicycle), "
Od piątej czekam" (I've been waiting
since five).
In
German and in
Dutch, SVO in main clauses coexists with SOV in subordinate clauses, as given in Example 1 below; and a change in syntax - for instance, by bringing an adpositional phrase to the front of the sentence for emphasis - may also dictate the use of VSO, as in Example 2. (See
V2 word order.)
Example 1: "Er weiß, dass ich jeden Sonntag das Auto wasche" (German: "He knows I wash the car every Sunday", lit. "He knows, that I every Sunday the car wash"). Cf the simple sentence "Ich wasche das Auto jeden Sonntag", "I wash the car every Sunday".
Example 2: "Elke zondag was ik de auto" (Dutch: "Every Sunday I wash the car", lit. "Every Sunday wash I the car"). "Ik was de auto elke zondag" translates perfectly into English "I wash the car every Sunday", but as a result of changing the syntax, inversion SV->VS takes place.
English developed from such a reordering language, and still bears traces of this word order, for example in
locative inversion ("In the garden sat a cat") and some clauses beginning with negative expressions: "only" ("only then do we find X"), "not only" ("not only did he storm away, but he also slammed the door"), "under no circumstances" ("under no circumstances are the students allowed to use a mobile phone"), "on no account" and the like.
Properties
Subject Verb Object languages almost always place
relative clauses after the nouns they modify and
adverbial subordinators before the clause modified.
Although some Subject Verb Object languages in West Africa, the best-known being
Ewe, use
postpositions in noun phrases, the vast majority of Subject Verb Object languages have
prepositions like English does. Most Subject Verb Object languages place genitives after the noun, though there is a significant minority, including the postpositional SVO languages of West Africa, the
Hmong-Mien languages, some
Sino-Tibetan languages and such European languages as Swedish, Danish, Lithuanian and Latvian, that have
prenominal genitives (as would be expected in a
SOV language).
Outside of European languages, Subject Verb Object languages have a strong tendency to place
adjectives,
demonstratives and
numerals after the noun they modify, though Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Malay place numerals before nouns as English does. Some linguists have come to actually view the numeral as the head in this relationship to fit the rigid right-branching of these languages.
See also
Sources
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