Subject–object–verb
In linguistic typology, a subject–object–verb (SOV) language is one 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, as opposed to the actual Standard English "Sam ate oranges". The label is often used for ergative languages such as Adyghe and Basque that do not have subjects but have an agent–object–verb order.
Incidence
| Word order |
English equivalent |
Proportion of languages |
Example languages |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SOV | "She him loves." | 45% |
|
Japanese, Latin, Tamil |
| SVO | "She loves him." | 42% |
|
English, Mandarin, Russian |
| VSO | "Loves she him." | 9% |
|
Hebrew, Irish, Zapotec |
| VOS | "Loves him she." | 3% |
|
Malagasy, Baure |
| OVS | "Him loves she." | 1% |
|
Apalai?, Hixkaryana? |
| OSV | "Him she loves." | 0% | Warao | |
Frequency distribution of word order in languages
surveyed by Russell S. Tomlin in 1980s.[1][2]
Among natural languages with a word order preference, SOV is the most common type (followed by subject–verb–object; the two types account for more than 75% of natural languages with a preferred order).[3] Languages that have SOV structure include Ainu, Akkadian, Amharic, Armenian, Assamese, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Basque, Bengali, Burmese, Burushaski, Dogon languages, Elamite, Ancient Greek, Hindi, Hittite, Hopi, Hungarian, Ijoid languages, Itelmen, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Kurdish, Classical Latin, Manchu, Mande languages, Marathi, Mongolian, Navajo, Nepali, Newari, Nivkh, Nobiin, Pāli, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Quechua, Sanskrit, Senufo languages, Seri, Sicilian, Sindhi, Sinhalese and most other Indo-Iranian languages, Somali and virtually all other Cushitic languages, Sumerian, Tagalog, Tibetan and nearly all other Tibeto-Burman languages, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and all other Dravidian languages, Tigrinya, Turkic languages, Turkish, Urdu, Yukaghir, and virtually all Caucasian languages.
Standard Mandarin is SVO, but for simple sentences with a clear context, word order is flexible enough to allow for SOV or OSV. German and Dutch are considered SVO in conventional typology and SOV in generative grammar. For example, in German, a basic sentence such as "Ich sage etwas über Karl" ("I say something about Karl") is in SVO word order. When a noun clause marker like "dass" or "wer" (in English, "that" or "who" respectively) is used, the verb appears at the end of the sentence for the word order SOV. A possible example in SOV word order would be "Ich sage, dass Karl einen Gürtel gekauft hat." (A literal English translation would be "I say that Karl a belt bought has.") This is V2 word order.
Aharon Dolgopolsky supposes the Proto-Nostratic to be SOV.
A rare example of SOV word order in English is "I (subject) thee (object) wed (verb)" in the wedding vow "With this ring, I thee wed."[4]
Properties
SOV languages have a strong tendency to use postpositions rather than prepositions, to place auxiliary verbs after the action verb, to place genitive noun phrases before the possessed noun, to place a name before a title or honorific ("James Uncle" and "Johnson Doctor" rather than "Uncle James" and "Doctor Johnson"), and to have subordinators appear at the end of subordinate clauses. They have a weaker but significant tendency to place demonstrative adjectives before the nouns they modify. Relative clauses preceding the nouns to which they refer usually signals SOV word order, but the reverse does not hold: SOV languages feature prenominal and postnominal relative clauses roughly equally. SOV languages also seem to exhibit a tendency towards using a time–manner–place ordering of adpositional phrases.
In linguistic typology one can usefully distinguish two types of SOV language in terms of their type of marking:
- dependent-marking has case markers to distinguish the subject and the object, which allows it to use the variant OSV word order without ambiguity. This type usually places adjectives and numerals before the nouns they modify and is exclusively suffixing without prefixes. SOV languages of this first type include Japanese and Tamil.
- head-marking distinguishes subject and object by affixes on the verb rather than markers on the nouns. It also differs from the dependent-marking SOV language in using prefixes as well as suffixes, usually for tense and possession. Because adjectives in this type are much more verb-like than in dependent-marking SOV languages, they usually follow the nouns. In most SOV languages with a significant level of head-marking or verb-like adjectives, numerals and related quantifiers (like "all", "every") also follow the nouns they modify. Languages of this type include Navajo and Seri.
In practice, of course, the distinction between these two types is far from sharp. Many SOV languages are substantially double-marking and tend to exhibit properties intermediate between the two idealised types above.
Examples
Albanian
| Sentence | Agimi librin e mori. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | Agimi | librin | e mori | ||
| Gloss | Agimi | the book | took | ||
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | ||
| Translation | Agimi took the book. (It was Agimi who took the book) | ||||
Arabic
| Sentence | .مَا كَانُوا إِيَّانَا يَعْبُدُونَ | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | مَا كَانُوا | إِيَّانَا | يَعْبُدُونَ | |
| Gloss | مَا كَانُوا (are not+nominative "u" ending) | إِيَّانَا (us+accusative "a" ending) | يَعْبُدُونَ (they worship+3. masculine plural "un" ending) | |
| Transliteration | mā kānū | ʾiyyānā | yaʿbudūna | |
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | |
| Translation | They do not worship us. | |||
Azerbaijani
| Sentence | Yusuf almanı yedi . | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | Yusuf | almanı | yedi | ||
| Gloss | Joseph | the apple | ate | ||
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | ||
| Translation | Joseph ate the apple. | ||||
Basque
Basque does not have subjects, but has an agent–object–verb order in transitive clauses:
| Sentence | Enekok sagarra ekarri du. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | Enekok | sagarra | ekarri | du | |
| Gloss | Eneko (+ERGative) | the apple | brought (to bring) | AUX has | |
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | ||
| Translation | Eneko has brought the apple | ||||
Burmese
Burmese is an analytic language.
| Sentence | ငါက စက္ကူဘူးကို ဖွင့်တယ်။ | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | ငါ | က | စက္ကူဘူး | ကို | ဖွင့် | တယ် |
| IPA | ŋà nga |
ɡa̰ ga. |
seʔkù bú se'ku bu: |
ɡò gou |
pʰwìɴ hpwin. |
dè de |
| Gloss | I | (subj) | box | (obj) | open | (pres) |
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | |||
| Translation | I open the box. | |||||
Chinese
Generally, Chinese languages are all SVO languages. However, especially in Mandarin, SOV is tolerated as well. There is even a special structure to form a SOV sentence.
| Sentence | 我把苹果吃了. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | 我 | 把 | 苹果 | 吃了. |
| Transliteration | Wǒ | bǎ | píngguǒ | chīle |
| Gloss | I | sign for moving object before the verb | apple | ate |
| Parts | Subject | Sign | Object | Verb |
| Translation | I ate the apple. | |||
Dutch
Dutch is partly SOV. For simple verbs, it is generally SVO, but for compound verbs, the finite (ie. inflected) verb remains in second position while the non-finite verb (infinitive or participle) is moved to the end of the clause.
| Sentence | Wij hebben je geholpen. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parts | Wij | hebben | je | geholpen | |
| Gloss | We | have | you | helped | |
| Parts | Subject | aux | Object | Verb | |
| Translation | We helped you | ||||
French
The French language usually uses a subject–verb–object structure, but when using most pronouns, it places enclitics before the verb. That is sometimes mistaken for SOV word order.
| Sentence | Nous les avons. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parts | Nous | les-avons. | |||
| Gloss | We | them/those-have | |||
| Parts | Subject | Object-Verb | |||
| Translation | We have those/them | ||||
German
German is partially SOV. For simple verbs, it is SVO, but for compound verb structures, the auxiliary, which is a finite (ie. inflected) verb, appears in second position while the non-finite verb (infinitive or participle) appears at the end of the clause.
| Sentence | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | Horst | hat | einen Apfel | gegessen |
| Gloss | Horst | has | an apple | eaten |
| Parts | Subject | Auxiliary | Object | Verb |
| Translation | Horst ate an apple. | |||
The word order changes also depending on whether the phrase is a main clause or a dependent clause. In dependent clauses, the word order is always entirely SOV (cf. also Inversion):
| Subordinate Clause | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | Weil | Horst | einen Apfel | gegessen | hat, ... |
| Gloss | Because | Horst | an apple | eaten | has, ... |
| Parts | Conjunction | Subject | Object | Verb | Auxiliary |
| Translation | Because Horst ate an apple, ... | ||||
Hungarian
| Sentence | Pista kenyeret szel. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | Pista | kenyeret | szel | ||
| Gloss | Pista | bread | slices | ||
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | ||
| Translation | Pista slices bread. | ||||
Kazakh
| Sentence | Дастан кітап оқыды. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | Дастан | кітап | оқыды | ||
| Transliteration | Dastan | kitap | oqıdı | ||
| Gloss | Dastan | the book | read | ||
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | ||
| Translation | Dastan read the book. | ||||
Italian
The Italian language usually uses a subject–verb–object structure.
| Sentence | Io sto mangiando una mela | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parts | I | am | |||
| Gloss | I | am | |||
| Parts | Subject | Object-Verb | |||
| Translation | I am eating an apple | ||||
Japanese
| Sentence | 私が箱を開けます。 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | 私 | が | 箱 | を | 開けます。 | |
| Romanization | watashi | ga | hako | o | akemasu. | |
| Gloss | I | (sub) | box | (obj) | open(polite) | |
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | |||
| Translation | I (am the one who) open(s) the box. | |||||
The markers が (ga) and を (o) are, respectively, subject and object markers for the words that precede them. Technically, the sentence could be translated a number of ways ("I open a box", "It is I who open the boxes", etc.), but this does not affect the SOV analysis.
Japanese has some flexibility in word order, so an OSV is also possible. (箱を私が開けます。)
Korean
| Sentence | 내가 상자를 연다. | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | 내 | 가 | 상자 | 를 | 연 | 다. |
| Romanization | nae | ga | sangja | reul | yeon | da. |
| Gloss | I | (nominative) | box | (accusative) | open | (indicative) |
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | |||
| Translation | I open the box. | |||||
'가 (ga)/이 (i)' is a particle that indicates the nominative case. '를 (reul)/을 (eul)' is a particle that indicates the accusative case. '다 (da)' indicates the declarative.
※ Here, '나 (na, I (pronoun))' is changed to '내 (nae)' before '가 (ga)'.
Latin
Classical Latin was an inflected language and had a very flexible word order and sentence structure, but the most usual word order was SOV.
| Sentence | Servus puellam amat | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | Servus | puellam | amat | |||
| Gloss | Slave (nom) | girl (acc) | loves | |||
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | |||
| Translation | The slave loves the girl. | |||||
Again, there are multiple valid translations (such as "a slave") that do not affect the overall analysis.
Pashto
| Sentence | .زه کار کوم | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Words | زه | کار | کوم |
| Gloss | زه (Subject Pronoun) | کار (Noun) | کوم (verb) |
| Transliteration | ze | kaar | kawum |
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb |
| Translation | I do the work. | ||
Persian
| Sentence | .من سیب میخورم | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Words | من | سیب | میخورم |
| Gloss | I | apple | eat (first person present tense) |
| Transliteration | man | seeb | mikhoram |
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb |
| Translation | I am eating an apple. | ||
Russian
Russian is an inflected language and very flexible in word order; it allows all possible word combinations.
| Sentence | Она его любит | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | Она | его | любит | |||
| Gloss | Она (nom) | его (acc) | любит | |||
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | |||
| Translation | She loves him | |||||
Telugu
| Sentence | రాముడు బడికి వెళ్తాడు. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Words | రాముడు | బడికి | వెళ్తాడు. |
| Transliteration | Rāmuḍu | baḍiki | veḷtāḍu |
| Gloss | Ramu | to school | goes. |
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb |
| Translation | Ramu goes to school. | ||
Tamil
| Sentence | நான் தான் பெட்டியை திறப்பேன். | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | நான் | தான் | பெட்டி | யை | திறப்பேன்。 | |
| Romanization | Nān | tān | peṭṭi | yai | tiṟappēn. | |
| Gloss | I | (nominative) | box | (accusative) | open(indicative verb) | |
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | |||
| Translation | I (am the one who) open(s) the box. | |||||
The தான் (tān) and யை (yai) are, respectively, nominative and accusative markers for the subject and object that respectively precede them. The தான் (tān) is optional in the Tamil language. The sentence may literally be translated as 'I [who am] the box [which] open shall.'
The sentence may also be translated, although less frequently, as பெட்டியை நான் தான் திறப்பேன் (Peṭṭiyai nāṉ tāṉ tiṟappēn), or simply, பெட்டியை திறப்பேன் (Peṭṭiyai tiṟappēn) as Tamil is a null-subject language because the indicative verb at the end of the word indicates the 1st person subject. This follows the object-subject-verb (OSV) pattern.
Turkish
| Sentence | Yusuf elmayı yedi. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | Yusuf | elmayı | yedi | ||
| Gloss | Yusuf | the apple | ate | ||
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | ||
| Translation | Yusuf ate the apple. | ||||
Udmurt
| Sentence | мoн книгa лыӟӥcькo. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | мoн | книгa | лыӟӥcькo. | ||
| Gloss | I | a book | to read | ||
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | ||
| Translation | I am reading a book. | ||||
Yi
| Sentence | ꉢꌧꅪꋠ. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Words | ꉢ | ꌧꅪ | ꋠ . | ||
| Romaniz. | nga | syp-hni | zze. | ||
| Gloss | I | (an) apple | (to) eat. | ||
| Parts | Subject | Object | Verb | ||
| Translation | I eat an apple. | ||||
References
- ^ Introducing English Linguistics International Student Edition by Charles F. Meyer
- ^ Russell Tomlin, "Basic Word Order: Functional Principles", Croom Helm, London, 1986, page 22
- ^ Crystal, David (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (2nd edition ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-55967-7.
- ^ Andreas Fischer, “‘With this ring I thee wed’: The verbs to wed and to marry in the history of English.” Language History and Linguistic Modelling: A Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his 60th Birthday. Ed. Raymond Hickey and Stanislaw Puppel. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 101 (Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997), pp.467-81
