Word order
Word orderis part ofsyntax,which is part ofgrammar.Word order may be different in different languages. For example,English"I play tennis only sometimes" would be inGermanIch spiele nur manchmal Tennis,literally "I play only sometimes tennis". InNorwegian,the same sentence would beJeg spiller bare tennis noen ganger( "I play tennis only sometimes" ).
InPortuguese,the sentence could beEu só jogo tênis algumas vezes( "I only play tennis sometimes), but word order can be changed toEu jogo tênis só algumas vezes( "I play tennis only sometimes" ). However,Eu jogo só tênis algumas vezesis not allowed ( "I play only tennis sometimes" ) because the meaning would be changed.
Subject-verb-object
[change|change source]In English, asimple sentencewith a verb (an action), subject (who or what is doing the action), and an object (to whom or what the action is done) is written with a subject-verb-object word order (SVO). For example, in the sentence "Robert opens the door", "Robert" is the subject, "opens" is the verb and "door" is the object. SVO is the second-most common word order among all languages and is used in 42% of them.[1]Examples areMandarin Chinese,Bahasa Melayu,Bahasa Indonesia,Spanish,French,Italian,ThaiandVietnamese.While some of the above languages can use other word orders, such as SOV and VSO, they use SVO for the simplest sentences.
In other languages, sentences can use other word orders. ConsiderRobert opens the door.In English, changing the word order to "The door opens Robert" would change the meaning of the sentence. InLatin,however,Robertus ianuam aperitandianuam Robertus aperitmean the same.Ianuamis in theaccusative caseand so it is the direct object andRobertusthe subject. Changing the cases of the words, however, toRobertem ianua aperitwould change the meaning of the sentence:ianuais now in thenominative caseand so it is the subject andRobertumthe object.
Subject-object-verb
[change|change source]The subject-object-verb (SOV) word order is the one that is used by the greatest number of distinct languages, 45% of them.[1]It is especially common in the theoretical language family that is known as theAltaic language family,which includes many languages such asJapanese,Korean,Mongolianand theTurkic languages.
In Japanese, for example, asimple sentenceuses SOV. In other words, the sentence "Robert opens the door" becomes "Robert the door opens". Such languages often usepostpositions,which act likeprepositionsbut appear after content words rather than before them, to show the role of a word in the sentence. The sample sentence "Robert opens the door" would be in Japanese ロバートはドアを khai けるRobāto-wa doa-o akeruin which はwaas in ロバートはRobāto-washows that ロバートRobāto (Robert)is the topic of the sentence, and をoas in ドアをdoa-oshows that ドアdoais the direct object of the sentence. Around 45% of all languages are SOV languages.[1]
Verb-subject-object
[change|change source]The verb-subject-object (VSO) word order is the third-most common word order in world languages. There are far fewer VSO languages than SVO and SOV languages, and only 9% of them are VSO.[1]Language groups in which VSO is common includeAfroasiatic languages,such asArabic,HebrewandAramaic,andCeltic languages,such asIrish,WelshandCornish.In VSO languages, "Robert opens the door" would be "Opens Robert the door". Spanish sentences are usually SVO, but VSO is also common. In Spanish, the example above can be asRoberto abre la puerta(Robert opens the door) orAbre Roberto la puerta(Opens Robert the door).
Other types
[change|change source]Aside from SVO, SOV, and VSO, other kinds of word orders are rather uncommon. VOS word order makes up at around 3% of all languages, and languages that begin with the object (OVS and OSV) are extremely few, each around 1-0% percent each.[1]
References
[change|change source]- ↑1.01.11.21.31.4"The typology of the word order of Languages".sjsu.edu.Archived fromthe originalon 2017-01-30.Retrieved2017-07-09.