Word order explained

In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest. The primary word orders that are of interest are the constituent order of a clause—the relative order of subject, object, and verb; the order of modifiers (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, possessives, and adjuncts) in a noun phrase; and the order of adverbials.


For most nominative–accusative languages which have a major word class of nouns and clauses which include subject and object, constituent word order is commonly defined in terms of the finite verb (V) and its arguments, the subject (S) and object (O).[2] [3] [4] [5]


Finding the basic constituent order

It is not always easy to find the basic word order of S, O and V. First, not all languages make use of the categories of subject and object. In others, the subject and object may not form a clause with the verb. If subject and object can be identified within a clause, the problem can arise that different orders prevail in different contexts. For instance, French has SVO for nouns, but SOV when the object is a pronoun and VSO for questions; German has verb-medial order in main clauses, but verb-final order in subordinate clauses. In other languages the word order of transitive and intransitive clauses may not correspond. In still others, the rules for ordering S, O, and V may exist, but be secondary to (and often overruled by) more fundamental ordering rules—e.g., for considerations such as topic–comment. To have a valid base for comparison, the basic word order is defined as:



Constituent word orders

These are all possible word orders for the subject, verb, and object in the order of most common to rarest (the examples use "I" as the subject, "see" as the verb, and "him" as the object):


Others, such as Latin, Romanian and Finnish, have no strict word order; rather, the sentence structure is highly flexible and reflects the pragmatics of the utterance. Nonetheless, there is often a preferred order; in Latin, SOV is the most frequent outside of poetry, and in Finnish SVO is both the most frequent and obligatory when case marking fails to disambiguate argument roles. Just as languages may have different word orders in different contexts, so may they have both fixed and free word orders. For example, Russian has a relatively fixed SVO word order in transitive clauses, but a much freer SV / VS order in intransitive clauses. Cases like this can be addressed by encoding transitive and intransitive clauses separately, with the symbol 'S' being restricted to the argument of an intransitive clause, and 'A' for the actor/agent of a transitive clause. ('O' for object may be replaced with 'P' for 'patient' as well.) Thus Russian is fixed AVO but flexible SV/VS. Such an approach allows the description of word order to be more easily extended to languages which do not meet the criteria in the preceding section. For example, the Mayan languages have been described with the rather uncommon VOS word order. However, they are ergative–absolutive languages, and the more specific word order is intransitive VS, transitive VOA, where S and O arguments both trigger the same type of agreement on the verb. Indeed, many languages claimed to have a VOS word order turn out to be ergative like Mayan.

Functions of constituent word order





Phrase word orders and branching

See main article: Branching (linguistics) and Head directionality parameter.





Pragmatic word order





In Portuguese, the clitic pronouns allow many different orders:

Other issues


For example, English is SVO (subject-verb-object), as in "I don't know that", but OSV is also possible: "That I don't know." This process is called topic-fronting (or topicalization) and is common. In English, OSV is a marked word order because it emphasises the object, and is often accompanied by a change in intonation.

An example of OSV being used for emphasis:

A: I can't see Alice. (SVO)

B: What about Bill?


Non-standard word orders are also found in poetry in English, particularly archaic or romantic terms – as the wedding phrase “With this ring, I thee wed” (SOV) or “Thee I love” (OSV) – as well as in many other languages.


Differences in word order complicate translation and language education – in addition to changing the individual words, the order must also be changed. This can be simplified by first translating the individual words, then reordering the sentence, as in interlinear gloss, or by reordering the words prior to translation, as in English-Ordered Japanese. See reordered languages for further examples.

See also

Further reading

Notes and References

  1. Comrie, 1981
  2. Hengeveld, Kees (1992). Non-verbal predication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  3. Sasse, H.J.(1993) "Das Nomen – eine universelle Kategorie?” in Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 46 (3))
  5. Rijkhoff, Jan (2004), "The Noun Phrase", Oxford University Press, ISBN 0199269645
  6. Russel S.Tomlin;1986;Basic word order: Functional principles;London:Croom Helm
  8. "Language Universals and linguistic typology", Bernard Comrie, 1981