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In linguistic typology, a subject–object–verb (SOV) language is one in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence always or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence, as opposed to the actual Standard English "Sam ate oranges" which is subject–verb–object (SVO).
English is included in this group. An example is "Sam ate oranges." SVO is the second-most common order by number of known languages, after SOV. Together, SVO and SOV account for more than 87% of the world's languages. [1] The label SVO often includes ergative languages although they do not have nominative subjects.
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).
VSO is the third-most common word order among the world's languages, [1] after SOV (as in Hindi and Japanese) and SVO (as in English and Mandarin Chinese). Language families in which all or many of their members are VSO include the following: the Insular Celtic languages (including Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Breton)
It is a more common default permutation than OVS and OSV but is significantly rarer than SOV (as in Hindi and Japanese), SVO (as in English and Mandarin), and VSO (as in Filipino and Irish). [1] Families in which all or many of their languages are VOS include the following: the Algonquian family (including Ojibwa)
pineapple nota I apa fetch anana nota apa pineapple I fetch I fetch a pineapple British Sign Language (BSL) normally uses topic–comment structure, but its default word order when topic–comment structure is not used is OSV. Marked word order This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged ...
The most commonly attested word orders are SOV and SVO while the least common orders are those that are object initial with OVS being the least common with only four attested instances. [ 10 ] In the 1980s, linguists began to question the relevance of geographical distribution of different values for various features of linguistic structure.
Thus Old English is classified, to some extent, as an SOV language. However, example a represents a number of Old English clauses with object following a non-finite verb form, with the superficial structure verb-subject-verb object. A more substantial number of clauses contain a single finite verb form followed by an object, superficially verb ...