Talk:Word order

message: The allocation of German to the languages with SOV word-order overlooks the fact that the most basic word-order in German in "stand alone", that is, main clauses making statements is SVO. The proviso that German is subject to the V-2 rule merely highlights this. The fundamental SVO word order is particularly clear in those instances where all the determiners are omitted, as in newspaper headlines, where readers have to rely on word order (and context) to identify the subject and object, for example: "Mann biß Hund!"  (German only uses SOV word-order in subordinate clauses) - JohnC 03:53 29 Jul 2005 (UTC)
It is often unsatisfactory to refer to a language as a "SOV" language if it merely used that word order in some contexts. I endorse the comments made by JohnC and would add that in the case of German (and Dutch) it's standard practice, with compound verbs, to treat the auxiliary as "the verb". The whole logic V-2 is based on this. For example, in a sentence like "Gestern haben wir Ilse besucht" the V-2 position or "slot" is occupied by "haben" and there is no question of the verb following the object as SOV implies. Norvo (01:30 UTC, 31 Jul 2005)
:The verb in Gestern haben wir Ilse besucht is besuchen. It's true that the part of the verb complex that's inflected for person and number occupies V2 position in main clauses in German and Dutch, but that doesn't change the fact that the basic word order is SOV. The dominant theory in syntax for German/Dutch word order is that the person/number inflection is moved from final position to second position in main clauses, not that the infinitive or participle is moved to final position. --Angr/ 22:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: What standard theory? Inflections can be moved? If that´s transformational grammar then it is for good reason not generally used in europe. It is a theory developed "for any language, say english". Semantically speaking the participle may be the main verb but in no traditional grammar of these languages that I've heard of is there a notion of the finite verb not being the main verb. It is with the finite that there is agreement. There is no "movement" of anything. Proto-germanic is known in fact to have changed from SOV to SVO, and that's the standard.--AkselGerner (talk) 20:59, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: German infinitives (and many subordinated clauses) always show Object-Verb order, unless the object itself is a subordinated clause (be it finite or infinite). But in the latter case, a pronoun or pro-adverb may take the normal position of the object, which is before the verb. 109.42.176.26 (talk) 10:04, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: other matters

message: How exactly does "word order" differ from "syntax" and isn't the former the more appropraite term? Would a merger be appropriate?
Peter Isotalo 07:17, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Syntax

message: :That word order is unmarked. That is, it contains no extra information to the listener.
That's a bit confusing.  In languages with looser constraints on word order, it's my understanding that there are morphemes that indicate grammatical case, to distinguish subjects vs. objects, etc.  In that sense, these languages are very much "marked".  In languages without case-marking morphemes, word order does carry information.  Is this what this passage is talking about, or is it trying to make a different point of some kind? -- Beland 17:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The point is that of markedness ([mar-ket-ness] not [markt-ness]) theory. In this context marking (as in morphological marking) is not the same as markedness, rather markedness refers to a member of a set being less default than another member (less marked). Usually the member of a set that is least marked is referred to as unmarked. The distinction can be traced in many directions, some linguists use a purely psycholinguistic measure others use a more typologically based measure. See the book Language Universals and Linguistic Typology: Syntax and Morphology" (Comrie, Bernard, 1981).--AkselGerner (talk) 23:09, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Factual question on markedness 

message: Russian, for example, has SVO transitive clauses but free order (SV or VS) in intransitive clauses.
Actually the Russian word order is free both for transitive and intransitive clauses, as Abolen mentioned. It is true that SVO (SV) is usually the unmarked order (so, Сел(V) Балда(S) на кобылу верхом - (he) sat(V), Balda(S), on the horse's back is marked: Pushkin emphasizes that Balda didn't tried to carry the horse with his hands).
However, this can depend on many things, not only transitivity.
For example, шёл(V) дождь(S) - (It) went(V), the rain(S), i.e. "it rained" is unmarked, whereas Светило солнце, но дождь(S) шёл(V) - the sun was shining, but the rain(S) went(V) is marked (the fact of rain is underlined). At the same time я(S) шёл(V) лесом - I(S) went(V) through a forest is unmarked and шёл(V) я(S) лесом is marked.
Another example. наступила(V) ночь(S) - (it) come(V), the night(S) is unmarked and ночь(S) наступила(V) is slightly marked (it is  emphasized that either (1) the night come (not finished) (2) it is night (not day) that come. The oral speech distinguishes between (1) and (2) via stress). On the contrary я(S) наступила(V) вам на ногу - I(S) stepped(V) over your foot is unmarked, вам на ногу наступила(V) я(S) is marked (It's me who hurt you).
Thus the unmarked word order for the same verb depends on the kind of subject.
:As a native speaker of Russian, I can confirm that word order in free in both transitive and intransitive clauses. Although SVO may be the default order for transitive clauses, other orders are commonly used for stress. For example, "я съел банан" is the default way of saying "I ate a banana." However, "банан я съел" is commonly used to stress the banana while "съел я банан" would stress the word "ate." There is no need for me to go into the details of the nuances of each order but this sentence can be said in six different orders, each with its own connotation. - Wikitiki89 (talk) - 23:46, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Word order vs transitivity in Russian 

message: It is absolutely necessary to add a section on constituent word order. There is much more to word order than basic word order and this should be shown in greater detail. 
Greenbergs universals should be mentioned.
Languages without unbound nouns should be mentioned (polysynthetic and nounless). This should be done in the context of morpheme order which is also missing.--AkselGerner (talk) 22:20, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the article is far from complete, but might it be the case that the section on phrasal word order covers what you term constituent word order? Anyway, you can always be bold and add those sections, we really need more people working on coverage of linguisticsJasy jatere (talk) 11:51, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I am giving it a try. Thanks for fixing my typoes and wiki-formatting errors.--AkselGerner (talk) 21:08, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing sections: 

message: This is obviously a french loan, and is used specifically when wanting to be, shall we say, flamboyant. It can be analyzed as a single-word french paraphrase, especially since it has an english-proper version (also a loan of course) namely extraordinary. As such it is not the best possible example, are there others?--AkselGerner (talk) 21:19, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extraordinaire? 

message: If we concentrate as a start on finding good reliable sources, preferably online, then it will be easier to organize the rewrite/reorganization. I'll try and find the sources on Dikian Functional Grammar, it's functionalist but quite formalist in the original sense of the word, they have some very astute observations on the layering of clause structure, not in terms of deep structure or underlying form (both of which are highly suspect because they usually synchronify as processes what can be proven to be diachronic "processes" of the past), but in terms of parts of speech. They have a lot to say on word and morpheme order.--AkselGerner (talk) 20:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, so far I haven't found exactly the ref I was looking for but this has a short description of what I mean: powerpoint presentation on functional grammar --AkselGerner (talk) 21:51, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

text: Here's a paper I found interesting: . 198.45.18.38 (talk) 00:27, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  How about we start with the sources? 

message: The section currently reads:
[edit] Functions of sentence word order
A fixed word order is one out of many ways to ease the processing of sentence semantics and reducing ambiguity. One method of making the speech stream less open to ambiguity (complete removal of ambiguity is probably impossible) is a fixed order of arguments and other sentence constituents. This works because speech is inherently linear. Another method is to label the constituents in some way, say morphologically. These are not the only means[citation needed]. Fixed word order reduces expressiveness but added marking increases information load in the speech stream.
Knowledge of word order on the other hand helps to identify the thematic relations of the NPs in a clause. If we can identify the verb in a clause, and we know that the language is accusative SOV, then we know that Grob smock Bzug probably means that Grob is the smocker and Bzug the entity smocked. Languages with no fixed word order cannot use this device for identifying the roles of the NPs and therefore often (but not always) resort to other means, like case marking or agreement. Also see Marking.
The mentioned functions of word order can be seen to affect the frequencies of the various word order patterns: An overwhelming majority of languages have an order in which S precedes O and V. Whether V precedes O or vice versa however has been shown to be a very telling difference with wide consequences on phrasal word orders[7].
Observing discourse patterns, one finds that old information (topic) tends to precede new information (comment). Furthermore, acting participants (especially humans) are more likely to be talked about (to be topic) than things simply undergoing actions (like oranges being eaten). If acting participants are often topical, and topic tends to be expressed early in the sentence, this entails that acting particpants have a tendency to be expressed early in the sentence. This tendency can then grammaticalize to a privileged position in the sentence, the subject.
The difference between the first and second paragraph is one of two different meanings of "function". The original version (which I heavily modified) focused only on the meaning "what is the purpose of the study of word order?", ignoring the more relevant meaning "what function does word order serve in languages?". I wished to highlight the latter and clarify the former (which was very vague and contained errors of fact). The fact tagged sentence in the first paragraph is a relic from that version because I couldn't find a source to deny that claim. I see the problem, but I would prefer the paragraphs to be merged rather than just the first one be taken out. I guess it's just my just reward for failing to WP:Be bold enough in the first place.--AkselGerner (talk) 20:27, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Tweaked it a bit more, merged the most aggravating repetitions to the more relevant paragraph, reordered most of the paragraphs. Is that better?--AkselGerner (talk) 20:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Functions of word order problem 

message: The article is flagged as needing an expert's attention. Doesn't it just? It goes on and on on the hobby horse it has mounted i.e. permutations of O, S, and V. The the article and its talk have only a couple of uses of the word "adverb". Other parts of speech are equally neglected. "Word order" may have a particular limited definition for some academics, though I doubt it, but for speakers and learners the placement of other words order changes meaning. Consider the missprinkling of the word "only". There is a commonly quoted sentence of about twelve words which has different meanings when "only" is its first, second,......nth word. WP is full of "Red trains only stop at X". That means that all they do at X is to stop (apart, I guess, from accumulate) when was it meant that Only red trains stop at X? Or red trains stop only at X or who knows what?--SilasW (talk) 13:37, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: word order is divided into WO in the clause (SOV) and WO in the phrase, mostly noun phrase. Adjuncts are relevant for word order, but do not receive much treatment in the literature. This is why they are not treated here. Cf. WP:ORJasy jatere (talk) 13:37, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  More to speech than S, O and V 

message: Greenberg's theory of word order in which clauses can be divided neatly into Subject (S), Verb (V) and Object (O) is really outdated. There have been studies which have found that there are SERIOUS problems with simply assuming that all language divide nominal lexical items into categories corresponding to the traditional 'subject' and 'object'. This assumption is a Euro-centric view which makes assumptions about all the languages of the world based on the languages of only ONE geographic region. Therefore, to have a series of article on each permutation of the Greenberg theory, like an article on SOV, SVO, OVS, OSV etc., is ridiculous. The latest and least regional-biased method of constituent order typology instead divides nominal lexial items into three categories: the most agent-like argument of a transitive verb (A), the only argument of an intransitive verb (S), and the least agent-like argument of a transitive verb (P). A and S together can be grouped as subjective, while S and P can be grouped as absolutive. And then, of course, V for Verb remains. This typology, dubbed Semantico-syntactic typology reflects the latest lingustic constituent order typology, and is a natural progression from Greenberg's hopelessely outdated system. The most common permutations of this system, which account for 85% of the world's languages, are as follows, with the transitive scenario first, followed by the intransitive scenario (for the remaining 15% of languages, it is likely impossible that a regular constituent order typology can be stated, as in these languages, constituent order is, for the most part, extremely flexible):
AVP/SV, APV/SV, VAP/VS
The overriding characteristic here is that the least agent-like argument of the transitive verb, P, always follows the most agent-like argument of the transitive verb, A. This is an overwhelming trend in the world's languages, with significant cognitive implications. I believe that Greenberg's outdated system should no longer be the definitive constituent order typology on wikipedia (and should definately NOT have an article for each permutation!!!), and that the Semantico-Syntactic typology should get much more coverage, as not only does it not have the same intrisic euro-centric biases as greenberg's outdated model, but it also reflects the latest research and model of constituent order typology to be produced in the lingustic community. --Paaerduag (talk) 00:38, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Greenberg Constituent Order Typology is Hopelessly Outdated

message: In "Sentence Word Orders" it is stated that Persian and Latin conform less to the SOV word order than "the other languages". This contradicts, however, the first paragraph of next section, where Persian is said to be a couter-example to the tendency not to have synchronically strict word order and case markings. 201.95.183.14 (talk) 19:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Persian 

message: It sounds very unlikely to me: speakers of Chinese, English and the Romance languages form a very large fraction of world's population, and these are all SVO. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 21:57, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: All right. I've reworded that sentence to make that clearer. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 09:49, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "SOV is the most common word order"? 

message: The beginning of this article states that OSV is the rarest order. I edited the list under "Sentence word orders" to reflect that, moving OVS to the second to last place. This is backed by the last further reading suggestion (Order of Subject, Object, and Verb (PDF): ) which gives VOS=26, OVS=9, and OSV=4 languages. Other references seem to support this. However, still other sources, including Wiki's article Object Verb Subject (and almost anything you read on Hixkaryana) says OVS is the rarest. Is this article wrong, or the OVS one? 198.45.18.38 (talk) 00:09, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem may lie in S not always being the same thing when comparing these languages. It would be instructive to know which of them actually have subjects. — kwami (talk) 01:02, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rarest Word Order? 

message: I think the article should clarify a little better about the old IndoEuropean languages, and probably other languages in general. To say, for example, that classical Latin (modern neoLatin is a bit different) had "SOV normal word order" is misleading. Though certain orderings were arguably a bit more common, the language had, in fact, little ordering to it. It is rather like arguing that, because more Americans drink Coca-Cola than any other soft drink, Coke is prescribed by law. Nothing says anybody has to drink Coke nor is it true that people overwhelmingly drink Coke. That just tends to be more common right now. Similarly, SOV may have been more commonly found in Latin writings but to describe that as though it were a characteristic of the language is misleading. In general, my understanding is that proto-IndoEuropean had no word order and the accumulation of word ordering in these languages has been a very recent development to compensate for loss of morphology. I believe this is similarly the case in some other language families. Point being, the article should be clearer that word order is not an inherent way to distinguish languages and not attempt to pigeon-hole.
--Mcorazao (talk) 20:51, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Latin, Persian, Greek, and others 

message: I'm trying to put together a tentative list of the languages of the world with the linguistic features of each. It's a huge task and I don't have time to do it on my own. Please come here - User:Bienfuxia/List of languages by linguistic features - and help out a bit, when it's ready I can publish it as a proper article. This is one occasion where wiki is missing something substantive that it should have, please come along and do what you can! Bienfuxia (talk) 07:43, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  New list 

message: Shouldn't this be punctuated? Either "Subject, Object, Verb", as in older texts, or "Subject–Object–Verb", as here. — kwami (talk) 00:51, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Moving. — kwami (talk) 12:53, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Punctuation 

message: All my lovin' to whomever makes a map like this for word orders.--Louiedog (talk) 18:03, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not quite as simple as date formats. Date formats are a formalized feature of standard written languages, made uniform within political borders. Word order is a feature of both standard written and non-standard, or even unstandardized, spoken languages, subject to much variation even within one language. What's more, boundaries between languages are much more ambiguous and unstable than those between countries, not to mention the fact that some of the languages with less common word orders are hard to place on a world map due to small territories, shifting locations and shrinking numbers of speakers. I suppose the closest thing to what you are asking for is this - http://wals.info/feature/81A?s=20&z6=3000&z5=2999&z4=2998&z3=2997&z7=2996&z2=2995&z1=2994&tg_format=map&v1=c00d&v2=cd00&v3=cff0&v4=dff0&v5=dd00&v6=d00d&v7=cccc VonPeterhof (talk) 15:03, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maps: All my lovin 

message: The examples box next to the section "Constituent word orders" lists Tamil as an example for VSO word order.
While the Wikipedia article on the Tamil Language itself - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language#Syntax
lists (And I believe this to be true) that Tamil has a SOV word order. Should that example box be cleaned up ?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nausher (talk • contribs) 07:24, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Word Order in Tamil 

message: I am not a linguist, just someone who reads Latin, but I think this sentence about Latin, in the section on fluid word order, is not precise: "Adjectives normally go after a noun they modify (either the Subject or the Object), but this is not absolutely required."
It is true that it is not required to place the adjective after the noun, though it is most common, but there is a circumstance in which noun/adjective order affects meaning: adjectives for size or quantity are, as a rule (I'm sure it has been broken by poets), to be placed before the noun they modify. The classic example is that "magnus carolus", which means "large Charles", is quite different from "carolus magnus", which refers to Emperor Charlemagne [="Charles the Great"].
As I said, this is nit-picking, but "not absolutely required" sounds to me like it describes a universally-applicable, but not mandatory, rule of thumb, as opposed to a general guideline that is, in fact, explicitly non-standard in some cases.
LiberalArtist (talk) 03:41, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nit-picking about Latin word order 

message: someone should explain thisJl215 (talk) 23:23, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: verb-medial order

message: "Sometimes patterns are more complex: German, Dutch and Frisian have SOV in subordinates, but V2 word order in main clauses, SVO word order being the most common. Using the guidelines above, the unmarked word order is then SVO." (wrong part highlighted)
As a native speaker of Dutch, I must say that my language "feels" SOV. It just so happens that in main clauses the verb moves. But verb modifiers don't move and overall my language is still SOV and perhaps more importantly feels SOV when speaking and listening.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.87.10 (talk) 12:02, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement about Dutch word order is wrong 

message: Somewhat re-iterating what has been stated above but some (most?) of the Romance languages do not strictly follow one word order. With regard to verbs and objects, Spanish (and Italian, Portuguese, ...) use VO when the object is a noun (and a direct object), and OV when the object is a pronoun. When there is no object Spanish typically uses VS. When there is an object and subject you can have OVS, SVO, SOV, or VOS.
The older Indo-European languages (Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit) were even more flexible (and perhaps some modern IE languages; I am not familiar with all of the details). And I have to believe this is not unique only to the IE family. Point being that the article implies that strict word order is the norm which is not really accurate.
--MC  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:100C:B00B:C258:5FA:680A:1EB7:2EBA (talk) 04:41, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Romance language word order 

message: Identify the kind of information you need to have about a word Adiricks (talk) 09:56, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Communication skills 

message: to the one who improved my edit. thank you. but this page needs to be just a lil' bit longer seeing as there are not a lot of ways to learn about this subject.
thanks in advance! Witch Khan (talk) 09:31, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  we need to add some stuff to this