Subject–object–verb word order

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.

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