Word Order

Information about Word Order

Linguistic typology
Morphological
Analytic
Synthetic
Fusional
Agglutinative
Polysynthetic
Oligosynthetic

Morphosyntactic
Alignment
Accusative
Ergative
Philippine
Active-stative
Tripartite
Inverse marking
Syntactic pivot
Theta role

Word Order
VO languages
Subject Verb Object
Verb Subject Object
Verb Object Subject
OV languages
Subject Object Verb
Object Subject Verb
Object Verb Subject
Time Manner Place
Place Manner Time

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In linguistic typology, word order is the order in which words appear in sentences. 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 this", but OSV is also possible: "This I don't know." This process is called topic-fronting (or topicalization) and is very common. In English, OSV is a marked word order because it emphasises the object.

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)

OSV word order is also found in poetry in English.

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, Korean, the Indo-Aryan languages and the Dravidian languages, 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.

*German and Dutch are SOV with V2 word order.

SVO languages include English, Portuguese, French, Chinese, Bulgarian, and Swahili, among others.

*Mandarin is SVO but has many SOV characteristics.

VSO languages include Classical Arabic, the Insular Celtic languages and Hawaiian.
VOS languages include Fijian and Malagasy.
OSV languages include Xavante.
OVS languages include Hixkaryana.

Others, such as Latin and Finnish, have no fixed word order; rather, the sentence structure is flexible. (Nonetheless, there is often a preferred word order; in Latin, SOV is the most frequent outside of poetry, and in Finnish SVO is the most frequent. For more information on word order in Finnish, see Finnish grammar.) In languages with this kind of flexible word order, the order of words in given sentence does not reliably indicate a noun's grammatical role, so nouns typically change their form to indicate their role; this is known as case declension.

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 nominative-accusative 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 (Je vois Cécile "I see Cécile"), but it incorporates or cliticizes objective pronouns before the verb (Je la vois literally "I her see"). 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. In other languages the word order of transitive and intransitive clauses may not correspond. Russian, for example, has SVO transitive clauses but free order (SV or VS) in intransitive clauses.

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 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 always go before nouns (a big car), and adverbs can go either way, but initially is more common (greatly improved).

Free word order

Free word order is used to indicate discourse structure rather than to indicate who the doer is. Free word order languages include Russian, Czech, Latin, and Hungarian.

Definition

The degree of synthesis refers to the morpheme-to-word ratio. Languages with more than one morpheme per word are synthetic.
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An oligosynthetic language (from the Greek ὀλίγος, meaning "few" or "little") is any language using very few morphemes, perhaps only a few hundred, which combine synthetically to form statements.
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In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs. The distinction can be made morphologically (through grammatical case or verbal agreement), syntactically (through word
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A nominative-accusative language (or simply accusative language) is one that marks the direct object of transitive verbs distinguishing them from the subject of both transitive and intransitive verbs.
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An ergative-absolutive language (or simply ergative) is one that treats the agent of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs.

Ergative vs.

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Austronesian alignment, commonly known as the Philippine- or Austronesian-type voice system, is a typologically unusual morphosyntactic alignment that combines features of ergative and accusative languages.
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An active-stative language, or active language for short, is one in which the sole argument of an intransitive verb is sometimes marked in the same way as the agent of a transitive verb (that is, like a subject in English), and sometimes in the same way as the direct object
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A tripartite language, also called an ergative-accusative language, is one that treats the subject of an intransitive verb, the subject of a transitive verb, and the object of a transitive verb each in different ways.
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A direct-inverse language is a language where clauses with transitive verbs can be expressed either using a direct or an inverse construction. The direct construction is used when the subject of the transitive clause outranks the object in saliency or animacy but the
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The syntactic pivot is the verb argument around which sentences "revolve", in a given language. This usually means the following:

If the verb has more than zero arguments, then one argument is the syntactic pivot.

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theta role or θ-role is the formal device for representing syntactic argument structure (the number and type of noun phrases) required syntactically by a particular verb. For example, the verb put requires three arguments (i.e., it is ditransitive).
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In linguistics, a VO language is a language in which the verb typically comes before the object (thus including SVO, VOS and VSO languages). It was W.P. Lehmann who first proposed to reduce the six possible permutations of word order to just two main ones, VO and OV, in
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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.
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Verb Subject Object (VSO) is a term in linguistic typology. It represents one type of languages when classifying languages according to the sequence of these constituents in neutral expressions: Ate Sam oranges.
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In linguistic typology, Verb Object Subject or Verb Object Agent - commonly used in its abbreviated form VOS or VOA - represents the language-classification type in which the following sequence of the three constituents, in neutral expressions, is
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In linguistics, an OV language is a language in which the object comes before the verb. They are primarily left-branching, or head-final, i.e. heads are often found at the end of their phrases, with a resulting tendency to have the adjectives before nouns, to place
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In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, then "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence.
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Object Subject Verb (OSV) or Object Agent Verb (OAV) is one of the permutations of expression used in Linguistic typology. OSV or OAV denotes the sequence "Object Subject Verb" in neutral expressions: Oranges Sam ate.
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Object Verb Subject (OVS) or Object Verb Agent (OVA) is one of the permutations of expression used in linguistic typology. OVS denotes the sequence 'Object Verb Subject' in unmarked expressions: Oranges ate Sam, Thorns have roses.
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Time Manner Place (TMP) describes one possible ordering of adpositional phrases in sentences.

Example: ... yesterday, by car, to the store.

Linguistic typology has observed that TMP order is common among Subject Object Verb (SOV) languages.
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Place Manner Time is a term used in linguistic typology to state the general order of adpositional phrases in a language's sentences: "to the store by car yesterday". It would seem that it is common among SVO languages. English, French, and Spanish belong to this category.
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Markedness is a linguistic concept that developed out of the Prague School (also known as the Prague linguistic circle).

A marked form is a non-basic or less natural form. An unmarked form is a basic, default form.
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A modal form is a provision of syntax that indicates the predication of an action, attitude, condition, or state other than that of a simple declaration of fact. The modality of a grammatical form is the quality or state in question.
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