Talk:Subject–verb–object word order

message: The example may be a bit confusing. While the default word order (without emphasis) in Russian is indeed SVO as shown in the table, the example is faulty. "She loves him" typically translates to SOV in Russian ("she him loves"), not SVO as shown in the table (SVO is possible but sounds artificial and is usually found in bad translations from English where the translator lazily copies the English word order without caring about how it actually would sound like in real life). That's because "him" is a clitic-like word and so it still tries to follow Wackernagel's law (a vestige of the old grammar). So, I think, the examples in the table should be changed to have personal names instead of pronouns like "him" because pronouns across languages often have special grammar rules unique to them (for instance, they are the only group of words in English which can have oblique case applied)
217.118.93.101 (talk) 21:34, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Frankly, this is where wiki is bad. Russian language belongs to SVO, because most common use is SVO - not because other placements are possible. Unlike english language most of IE languages also change words, depending on their placement in sentence - basically placement is not important, but word changes - are. This is something, that english language lacks and it is rather hard to explain properly in english. Also "She loves him" is a very stupid example, because it is not trivial - it also have submeaning, that Subject can become Object: he can love her, too. To avoid misconception it would be advisable to use subject, where object can't do verb to subject. "Я читаю wiki". You can still use other arrangements, but it would not be considered normal answer to "что ты делаешь?", if word order would be different from SVO.
There are limits for everyone (talk) 07:19, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Russian in the example (table)

message: I moved this from Subject-verb-object to Subject Verb Object because that was the format the other five permutations were in, and it was silly to have this one have a title with different punctuation and capitalization. -Branddobbe 04:54, Jan 26, 2004 (UTC)
I removed the mention of Klingon and Yoda because it was totally unrelated to SVO. (In fact, the inclusion of the note assumed that SVO is 'normal' against Klingon's 'abnormal' order, when in fact SVO is only the second most common order, if we are to believe the article.) -Bathrobe
:Which is the most common order? The SVO and SOV articles have SOV on top, while the others have SVO on top.
There were untitled sections at the top of this page, from contributions spanning at least three years .  I've taken the liberty to title these.  I also changed the resulting sort order to put change notifications at the top (this and the next two sections).  Please feel free to remedy my edits! Robbiemuffin (talk) 11:45, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change Log 

message: If Chinese (I know it is so for Mandarin at least) is cited on the talk as SVO, shouldn't it also be in the article?
:English, German, Kiswahili and Chinese are examples of languages that follow this pattern.
German is mixed SVO / SOV, certainly not a typical SVO language.
--Taw
ISTR that German main clauses are more precisely V2 ("verb second"), that is, Tv{SO}V, where T is a "topic", v is a single verb, S and O are any nouns left over, and V is any part of the verb phrase left over from v. --Damian Yerrick
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what about french? any french grammar buffs?
: French is SVO.
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Is the paragraph on Hebrew really necessary? It starts out by saying that Hebrew isn't of this gorup, so it seems pointless to then go on and describe why not. Tev 21:44, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Specific Languages 

message: The article and Subject Object Verb state that SOV is more popular than SVO.
What's the source of this claim ? Taw 18:29, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  SOV vs SVO 

message: Why does this article even mention the AOV order? Then, it gives so many examples of languages the use the AOV order. As I was reading this article, I got confused and thought it meant AVO, since that is the title. Does anyone else feel that the mention and examples of AOV should be removed?--El aprendelenguas 22:14, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hopefully that should clarify it. The examples are all AVO. kwami 23:29, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  AOV in AVO article? 

message: I'm no linguist, but would greatly appreciate if someone could clarify something for me. In Russian, while "Sam ate (the) oranges" is certainly proper, it can be said "Sam (the) oranges ate" - this emphasizes "who", or "Ate (the) oranges Sam" - this also emphasizes "who", or "(The) oranges Sam ate" - this emphasizes "what", or even "(The) oranges ate Sam" - this, again, emphasizes "what", and so on. It seems to me that, unlike in English, this structure (SVO) is very flexible in Russian. Are there other languages with such flexibility? With respect, Ko Soi IX 08:42, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Definitely, for instance Latin, Finnish, and Hungarian (see word order#Sentence word orders).  I am no linguist either, but I believe all Slavic languages (Russian included) have the that flexibility as well. --Cameltrader 21:05, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. With respect, Ko Soi IX 02:01, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know about Finnish, but neither does the article. First Finnish is listed as an SVO-ordered language in the beginning part, then listed as a Russian-like language where every word order is possible. Which one is false? 157.181.100.63 (talk) 00:58, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

text: Even in languages with flexible word order (often due to case, such as this exemple), there tend to be a "standard" word order when no particular word is stressed. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:00, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Depends. For example, "She went home" will normally, in the most neutral form, be "Она поехала домой", which is SVO. But "She loves him" would normally be "Она его любит" (SOV) instead of "Она любит его" (SVO). I'd say both of these forms are equally popular, but specific form depends on particular situation. Hence, someone saying "Она любит его" (SVO) in a neutral situation would be immediately singled out as non-native speaker. Mikus (talk) 21:08, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Russian

message: The entry says that romance languages use a SVO word order, but when using a pronoun as an object they use SOV.
The entry then shows some examples: from French Je t'aime (I you love), and from Spanish Te amo (you I love). But, "you I love" isn't  SOV, it's OSV. Thus contradicting the point. Te amo is just a form of, "Yo te amo" (I you love) but since Spanish is a null subject language the, "yo" (I) is optional. I edited the entry to say that, "te amo" is literaly, "I you love" instead of, "you I love", but this edit has been reverted. Am I wrong? Which literal translation is correct?
And on a completely unrealated note: are romance languages the only type of languages that do this? I recall reading that Greek is normaly SVO but becomes SOV with pronouns. Is this right?--Fantastic fred (talk) 19:39, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think "te amo" is better likened to "te yo amo" than "yo te amo", but "I you love" sounds very confusing in English. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:07, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting, I just saw this after I added my opinion to the preceding section. Now thinking about it, I'd say that this rule - to prefer SOV for pronouns for objects, while preferring SVO to other cases - is very much true for Russian. Mikus (talk) 21:13, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  You I love 

message: I know nothing about linguistic pyschology, but imagine that it has been researched, but no consensus has been reached, or perhaps that results are still inconclusive. Again, I am ignorant on this subject so I will let someone else change if neccessary.86.42.169.184 (talk) 16:00, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: "This has not been scientifically examined"

message: Arabic language can have SVO(look to qoran)typology,for example: al qittu qata' nawatan=the cat(-nominative suffix) cutted a nut(-accusative suffix).القطُ قطعَ نواةً
Humanbyrace (talk) 11:29, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabic language can have SVO(look to qoran)typology,for example: al qittu qata' nawatan=the cat(-nominative suffix)cutted a nut(-accusative suffix)القطُ قطعَ نواةً. 

message: This statement in the lede appears to be a typo:
: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."
Understanding what word order/typology is well enough to know that 1) there can be some flexibility in a language, and 2) there cannot be all-flexibility in a language: Should this passage just be nuked or is the writer getting at something valid, but using the wrong terminology? In any case, I think its both 1) out of place for the lede, and 2) so interesting, if true, that requires its own article. -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 05:41, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Russian typology 

message: In the box showing the frequency distribution of word order in languages surveyed by Russell S. Tomlin. The examples give Latin (rather than French/Spanish) and Hebrew/Irish (rather than Arabic). These may be the languages used in the original work however it is my opinion that the examples provided are not the best choices. Latin is spoken by no native speakers, Irish by next to no native speakers while Arabic, French and Spanish are languages of the UN and have hundreds of millions of speakers.
That's just my opinion though
114.77.196.32 (talk) 02:44, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  I love you language choices 

message: ...to add to the article is conditional clauses as well as (generally) temporal clauses. I am German and I notice that this is---by far---the most difficult thing for foreigners. Ich besuche dich heute abend, sobald ich Zeit habe. (I'll visit you tonight, as soon as I have time.) And you might already have guessed what they usually say: Ich besuche dich heute abend, sobald ich habe Zeit. -andy 77.190.44.126 (talk) 10:10, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  German: Maybe another good example... 

message: Hebrew is definitely SVO language. it sounds better to say "she loves him" rather than "loves she him". 
SVO stracture is the correct pattern in Hebrew, which is learnt in schools.
(actually, it's more likely to say "him she loves" than "loves she him".)
can someone fix it? i don't have an account. thank you.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.117.143.24 (talk) 00:26, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wrong Classification of Hebrew 

message: The table lists Malay as SVO, but the Malay article states that "OVA, commonly but inaccurately called "passive", is the basic and most common word order".  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.220.78.40 (talk) 04:07, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Malay Isn't SVO? 

message: SVO generally pertains to French, Italian and Spanish, but the example used by Russell S. Tomlin is wrong is this case. It would be "She him loves" in all three languages. --Explosivo (talk) 20:56, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  SVO in French, Italian, Spanish 

message: There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:VO language which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you.  —RMCD bot 03:34, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move discussion in progress 

message: German and Dutch should be removed from the list of "SVO-languages". It is true that in some sources they are classified in this way. But this is today a minority view and is only possible if you define: "a language that has S-V-O as the statistically most frequent order in clauses which only consist of S, O, and one single verb". As soon as you have an auxiliary, the German and Dutch order is S-Aux-O-V. In almost all aspects,  the German clause behaves different from English or other true SVO languages. It is better not to apply the category to German at all (this is how the typological database WALS, chapter 81 goes about it. Alazon (talk) 13:26, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Meanwhile, I've found out how to correct the template and brought it back.--Alazon (talk) 12:01, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  German is not an "SVO language"