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.[1] It is also the most common order
developed in Creole languages, suggesting that it may be
somehow more initially
'obvious' to human psychology. [2] Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, English, Finnish, Luganda, Greek, Hausa, Hebrew, Javanese , Kashmiri, Khmer, Latvian , Macedonian, Polish, Quiche, Rotuman, Russian, Swahili , Thai, Vietnamese and Yoruba are examples of languages that can follow an
SVO pattern. The label is often
used for ergative languages which do not have subjects,
but have an Agent Verb Object order. 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, Italian: (io) ti
amo 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. Arabic and Hebrew will occasionally use an SVO
pattern with sentences with
subject pronouns (e.g. Arabic ﻚﺒﺣﺃ ﺎﻧﺃ , Hebrew: בהוא ינא ךתוא, 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, though Modern Hebrew generally uses SVO
construction. 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.[citation needed] Finnish and Hungarian word order is similar. While SVO is
considered "regular," it often
changes to emphasize a
different part of the sentence.
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). [3] 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 [4] (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
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