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Concept
Subject–object–verb word order
Summary
In linguistic typology, a subject–object–verb (SOV) language is one in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence always or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, "Sam beer drank" would be an ordinary sentence, as opposed to the actual Standard English "Sam drank beer" which is subject–verb–object (SVO).
The term is often loosely used for ergative languages like Adyghe and Basque that really have agents instead of subjects.
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 87% of natural languages with a preferred order).
Languages that have SOV structure include
most Indo-Iranian languages (Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindustani, Marathi, Nepali, Pāli, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Sindhi, Sinhalese, Zazaki, Kurdish)
Ainu
Akkadian
Amharic
Armenian
Assyrian
Aymara
Basque
Burmese
Burushaski
Cherokee
Dakota
all Dravidian languages (Brahui, Duruwa, Gondi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Tulu)
Dogon languages
Elamite
Ancient Greek
Hajong
Hittite
Hopi
Ijoid languages
Itelmen
Japanese
Hachijo
Ryukyuan
Korean
Classical Latin
Lakota
Manchu
Mande languages
Meeteilon
Mongolian
Navajo
Newari
Nivkh
Nobiin
Omaha
Quechua
Senufo languages
Seri
Sicilian
Sunuwar
Somali and virtually all other Cushitic languages
Sumerian
Tibetan and nearly all other Tibeto-Burman languages
Tigrinya
Turkic languages
almost all Uto-Aztecan languages
Yukaghir
Zazaki
virtually all Caucasian languages.
Standard Mandarin is generally SVO but common constructions with verbal complements require SOV or OSV. Some Romance languages are SVO, but when the object is an enclitic pronoun, word order allows for SOV (see the examples below). German and Dutch are considered SVO in conventional typology and SOV in generative grammar. They can be considered SOV but with V2 word order as an overriding rule for the finite verb in main clauses, which results in SVO in some cases and SOV in others.
Official source
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