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81 Order of Subject, Object, and VerbMATTHEW S. DRYER

1 Defining the values

This map shows the ordering of subject, object, and verb in a transi-tive clause, more specifically declarative clauses in which both thesubject and object involve a noun (and not just a pronoun), as in theEnglish sentence in (1).

(1) [The dog] chased [the cat].S V O

English is SVO (Subject-Verb-Object), because the subject the dogin (1) precedes the verb while the object the cat follows the verb.

There are six logically possible orders of the three elements S, O,and V, as shown in the feature-value box.

itive clause, the A is the more agent-like argument in a transitiveclause, and the P is the more patient-like argument in a transitiveclause. For the purposes of this map, then, the term subject is usedfor the A while the term object is used for the P. A language shown onthe map as SOV could thus also be equally well and perhaps moreaccurately described as APV. Note that many linguists use the termssubject and object somewhat differently from this, and some linguistsquestion the applicability of these terms to some languages, butthese issues do not arise with the use of these terms here. For example,there is controversy surrounding the question of what ought to beconsidered the subject in Philippine languages, like Cebuano (cf.Schachter 1976). Cebuano has two common ways to express tran-sitive clauses, one of which is illustrated in (3).

(3) Cebuano (Austronesian; own data)gi-palit [sa babayi] [ang saging]goal.foc-buy nontop woman top banana‘The woman bought the bananas.’

While there is a question as to which of the two arguments in (3)should be considered a subject (or whether neither or both should),in both types of clauses the verb normally comes first, followed bythe A, and then the P. Hence, by the use of subject and object assumedfor this map, Cebuano is treated as a VSO language.

Note that while the position of the subject in intransitive clausesis generally the same as in transitive clauses, in some languages thisis not the case. See Chapter 82.

Some languages can be assigned straightforwardly to one of thesix types, because all orders other than one are either ungrammat-ical or used relatively infrequently and only in special pragmaticcontexts. Such languages can be said to have rigid order. There aremany other languages in which all six orders are grammatical. Suchlanguages can be said to have flexible order. Flexible order lan-guages are sometimes described as having “free” word order, thoughthis is misleading, since there are often pragmatic factors governingthe choice of word order.

We can further distinguish two subtypes of languages with flexibleword order. In some languages with flexible order, there is one orderwhich is most common and which can be described as the domi-nant order. In other flexible order languages, the flexibility is greaterand there is no one order that is the dominant order in terms of frequency of usage or pragmatic neutrality. Flexible order languagesin which one order is dominant are shown on the map according tothat dominant order – in other words, the map does not distinguishrigid order languages from flexible order languages with a dominantorder. Flexible order languages lacking a dominant order are shown onthe map as “lacking a dominant word order”. Russian is an exampleof a language with flexible word order in which SVO order can beconsidered dominant, so Russian is shown on the map as SVO. Seethe box section “Determining Dominant Word Order” on p. 371.

There are a number of different subtypes of languages lacking a dominant order which are not distinguished on the map. In somelanguages with highly flexible word order, all or most orders of sub-ject, object, and verb will be possible and common. Nunggubuyu(Gunwinyguan; northern Australia) is an example of such a lan-guage (Heath 1984: 507–13; 1986). But some languages lack a dom-inant order only because just the subject or just the object exhibitsflexibility with respect to the verb. For example, Syrian Arabic allowsboth SVO and VSO orders and there does not seem to be a reason(at least on the basis of the description by Cowell 1964: 407, 411) toconsider one of them dominant. However, only these two orders arecommon and the order of verb and object is relatively inflexible.

A third subtype of language lacking a dominant order consists oflanguages in which different word orders occur but the choice is

All six of these types are attested; examples of each type are given in (2).

(2) a. Japanese (Kuno 1973: 10)John ga tegami o yon-da.John subj letter obj read-pstS O V‘John read the letter.’

b. Mandarin (Li and Thompson 1981: 217)ZhVngsVn shYudâo-le yi-f Wng xìn.Zhangsan receive-perf one-clf letterS V O‘Zhangsan received a letter.’

c. Irish (Dillon and Ó Cróinín 1961: 166)Léann [na sagairt] [na leabhair].read.pres the.pl priest.pl the.pl book.plV S O‘The priests are reading the books.’

d. Nias (Austronesian; Sumatra, Indonesia; Brown 2001: 538)i-rino vakhe ina-gu3sg.realis-cook abs.rice mother-1sg.possV O S‘My mother cooked rice.’

e. Hixkaryana (Carib; Brazil; Derbyshire 1979: 87)toto y-ahosL-ye kamaraman 3:3-grab-distant.pst jaguarO V S‘The jaguar grabbed the man.’

f. Nadëb (Vaupés-Japurá; Brazil; Weir 1994: 309)awad kalapéé hapŒøhjaguar child see.indO S V‘The child sees the jaguar.’

Although all six of these orders are attested, the last two types, OVSand OSV, in which the object comes first, are rare.

The terms subject and object are used here in a rather informal semantic sense, to denote the more agent-like and more patient-likeelements respectively. Their use here can be defined in terms of thenotions S, A, and P, where the S is the single argument in an intrans-

1. Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) 497

2. Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) 435

3. Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) 85

4. Verb-Object-Subject (VOS) 26

5. Object-Verb-Subject (OVS) 9

6. Object-Subject-Verb (OSV) 4

7. Lacking a dominant word order 172

total 1228

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Order of Subject, Object, and Verb

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around the Philippines, among Polynesian languages of the Pacific,in Mesoamerica, and in the Pacific North-West. VOS order is alsoscattered around the globe, though there are no attested instanceson the mainland of Africa or Eurasia.

There are nine OVS languages on the map, six of which are spokenin South America, five in the Amazon basin, and one (Selknam) inTierra del Fuego. There are only four OSV languages shown: Waraoin Venezuela, Nadëb in Brazil, Wik Ngathana in northeastern Aus-tralia, and Tobati in West Papua, Indonesia. Languages without adominant order are especially common in North America and Aus-tralia, and to a lesser extent in South America. The scattering of thistype partly reflects the fact that this is not a homogeneous type, sinceit mixes languages with highly flexible order with languages whichhave more rigid order but where there are two dominant orders. Theformer type, languages with highly flexible order, is most commonin North America and Australia and relatively uncommon in Africa,Europe, Asia, New Guinea, and among Austronesian languages.

Map 81A shows the distribution of word order in various languagesof the past, though the times at which these languages were spokenvary from 4500 years ago to 1000 years ago. The map illustrates thefact that SVO, now a common order in Europe and around theMediterranean, was less common in the past: on the one hand, therewere SOV languages like Latin and Etruscan in western Europe; onthe other hand, there were many VSO languages in what is now theMiddle East, represented both by Semitic languages and by Egyptian.

3 Theoretical discussion

While the feature shown on Map 81 is perhaps the single mostfrequently cited typological feature of languages, it is now recog-nized that it represents a clause type that does not occur especially frequently in spoken language; it is more common that at least oneof the two arguments of a transitive clause will be pronominal, andin many languages pronominal subjects are expressed by verbalaffixes. It is argued by Dryer (1997) that a more useful typology isone based on two more basic features, whether the language is OVor VO and whether it is SV or VS; these are shown on the next twomaps, in Chapters 82 and 83. In addition, as noted above, the orderin transitive clauses is not always the same as the order in intransi-tive clauses. The feature shown on this map is also important in thatmany other features are predictable from it, at least statistically.Most of these features correlate more specifically with the order ofobject and verb (Greenberg 1963, Dryer 1992; see Chapters 95–97).For a few features, SVO languages exhibit properties intermediatebetween those of SOV languages and those of verb-initial languages,though in general they are more similar to verb-initial languages(Dryer 1991).

syntactically determined. For example, in German and Dutch, thedominant order is SVO in main clauses lacking an auxiliary andSOV in subordinate clauses and clauses containing an auxiliary (seeChapter 83 for examples). Because this results in both orders beingcommon, neither order is considered dominant here and these twolanguages are shown on the map as lacking a dominant word order.In general, if the word order varies according to whether there is anauxiliary verb, the language is shown on the map as lacking a dominantorder. Another language whose word order depends both on whetherthere is an auxiliary and whether the clause is a main clause is Dinka(Nilotic; Sudan): like German, the order is SVO in main clauseswithout an auxiliary, SAuxOV in main clauses with an auxiliary, butit is VSO in subordinate clauses without an auxiliary and AuxSOVin subordinate clauses with an auxiliary (Nebel 1948: 9, 25, 42, 75, 82).

Where languages differ in their order between main clauses andsubordinate clauses, the order in main clauses is used to classifythem on this map. For example, Quileute (Chimakuan; WashingtonState) is VSO in main clauses and SVO in subordinate clauses (Andrade 1933: 278), and is shown on the map as VSO. In some languages, word order is more fixed in subordinate clauses. For example, in Miya (Chadic; Nigeria), while both SVO and VOS arefound in main clauses, only VOS order is found in adverbial sub-ordinate clauses and relative clauses (Schuh 1998: 281, 291); becauseboth SVO and VOS are common in main clauses, Miya is shown onthe map as lacking a dominant order.

2 Geographical distribution

The most frequent of the six orders is SOV and it is widely dis-tributed across the globe. Perhaps the most striking region in whichSOV predominates is an area covering most of Asia, except inSouth-East Asia and the Middle East. It is also overwhelmingly thedominant order in New Guinea, most of the exceptions being alongthe north coast. It is the most common order among languages in Australia which have a dominant order at all, although even inlanguages in which SOV is dominant, the order is generally flexible.It is clearly the dominant order in North America outside of thePacific North-West and Mesoamerica.

The map shows three areas where SVO order predominates: (i) an area covering much of sub-Saharan Africa, though with a scattering of SOV and VSO languages; (ii) an area extending fromChina and South-East Asia south into the Austronesian languagesof Indonesia and the western Pacific; and (iii) Europe and aroundthe Mediterranean. SVO order is not common outside these areas.

VSO order is scattered around various parts of the world, in east-ern Africa (among various Eastern Sudanic languages), in NorthAfrica (Berber), in the western extremes of Europe (Celtic), in and

Egyptian

AkkadianAramaic

Hebrew

Phoenician

Arabic

Sabaic

Ge'ez

Etruscan

Hittite

Armenian

SanskritOld Persian

Greek (Attic)

Latin

Gaulish

Ancient Scandanavian

Old English

Common Slavic

Sumerian

Hurrian

Elamite

UrartianLuvian

Lycian

Lydian

Avestan

SabellianHispano-Celtic

Early Georgian

Old Tamil

Old Nubian

Old Norse

Old Irish

Orkhon Turkic

Classical Chinese

Classical Japanese

SOV [19]

SVO [3]

VSO [9]

No dominant order [6]

Map 81A Order of Subject, Object, and Verb in “Ancient” Languages

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dim

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akn jmo

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ath

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kie

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sti

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ani

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kms

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gal

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son

ygr

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nggkmw

ngw

bbu

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tni

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evn

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gbb

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krd

mkz

tao

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anc

gim

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ben

oya

bgomby

snh

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let

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yul

arq

cml

mon

ko

hatsgb

kuo

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yi

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ngk

skp

oks

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tul

idn

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lmb

mad

tas

lal

wol

awa

mrr

bus

koe

siatmg

ktl

jar

uld

gap

amb

dji

dhb

sml

mrl

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ewe

bam

ain

niv

knm

mrd

wrd

irq

ing

bkr

ham

nti

lat

kfe

mku

kmu

hun

khs

bej

mun baw

wam

una

igb

kob

kyl

eka

nko

mab

ket

kon

yko

fur

lad

ker

usa

sue

knr khm

lep

klv

juh

dio

tab

eve

hzb

nbd

nen

yid

kse

sup

hin

bur

spa

san

hmo

ala

kor

cha

prs

swa

heb

zul

dag

ind

mau

bma

abk

luv

bsq

kro

grk

lez

amekew

kho

lan

kay

hau

aeg

arp

tur

dni

viebag

asm

imo

mrt

orh

mal

may

fin

grb

geo

tuk

knd

goo

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tha

lav

frekha

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brm

tbt

myi

ger

wn

rus

par

ung

nug

din

asy

engiri

ceb

jpn

mnd

miy

nia

SOV [497]

SVO [435]

VSO [85]

VOS [26]

OVS [9]

OSV [4]

No dominant order [172]

wsk

rum

suk

wah

krw

jab

yar

sio

kkt

taw

bvi

bil

kta

hal

kau

kiw

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agamsmusr

mluama

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ahu

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nak teo

sis

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kel

kie

wom

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agt

nmd

rov

olo

aba

gln

one

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pat

neh

tbl

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ang

isapok

uhi

tnk

lon

msn

kyr

bon

paw

tum

nasgds

boa

kmo

tak

lgu

hua

kkv

knb

mnm

moa

kllfor

hhu

sul

tla

ktiedo

kmp

nam

sar

bin

gel

taugah

kae

kmb

amn

nal

alk

rwa

mri

yel

aabnag

wbn

awy

sud

sro

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iat

krr

nnd

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mmb

oro

der

bnn

kwa

kuo

nabfoe

oks

dum

idn

awa

sia

gap

amb

snt

mrdham

una

kobusa

sue

klv

ala

dag

ame

kew

arpimo

lav

tbt

kin

sht

rru

luo

ras

bsh

cai

day

nym

mgo

sod

pktldu

nyi

skm

wly

abo

hya

tmn

kom

dim

ngb

did

silken

nto

maa

mmv

bka

nbe

sgl

dha

ori

tna

ik

kba

lgi

kad

kar

msk

leb

kik

maj

so

tal

lnd

rim

gam

avo

rny

run ber

jmo

som

bob hnd

laa

hol

gmz

shb

tma

lug

pre

msl

mou

zay

mee

any

aja

tig

bol

lin

brn

mro

ten

cga

kre

mur

seb

nza

ma

bar

shm

tes

ktc

kmjacl

orw

amh

nan

gul

leg

chh

dok

qaf

bgr

nue

mbt

biamba

shl

bbu

kem

gbb

dgo

mga

trm

igsbid

gimbgo

mby

zan

bbl

yul

mad

koe

ktl

mrl

knm

irq

nti

nko

mabfur

san

kro

lan

orh

par

din

eastern New Guinea and Solomon Islandseastern Africa

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Mesoamericawestern North America

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