How could this be written

shrimpsdad said:

Wiki describes syntax as, "A basic feature of a language's syntax is the sequence in which the subject (S), verb (V), and object (O) usually appear in sentences. Over 85% of languages usually place the subject first, either in the sequence SVO or the sequence SOV. "

In the second sequence SOV how could The Subject and The Object come before the Verb? Can someone give me an example of this SOV in a sentence

Wiki continues..."The other possible sequences are VSO, VOS, OVS, and OSV, the last three of which are rare.
Without confusing the reader how could the other structures be written?
Thanks in advance.

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There are links in that Wikipedia article to examples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax

shrimpsdad said:

Wiki describes syntax as, "A basic feature of a language's syntax is the sequence in which the subject (S), verb (V), and object (O) usually appear in sentences. Over 85% of languages usually place the subject first, either in the sequence SVO or the sequence SOV. "

In the second sequence SOV how could The Subject and The Object come before the Verb? Can someone give me an example of this SOV in a sentence

Wiki continues..."The other possible sequences are VSO, VOS, OVS, and OSV, the last three of which are rare.
Without confusing the reader how could the other structures be written?
Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

If you want to bone up on basic grammar, you can check out Perdue OWL, Grammar Girl, or some basic grammar books.

Bob mowed the lawn. <--- Subject, verb, object. Notice those words are not capitalized.

The lawn was mowed by Bob. <-- OVS

Mowing the lawn brought Bob joy. Gerunds for fun and profit.

That the lawn had been mowed shocked Bob.

Which part of the lawn to start on, that was the dilemma facing Bob as he stood atop Mordor.

I'm bored.

I've always thought that German brains/culture must be very affected by the fact that operative verbs come at the end of a sentence. The listener is left hanging fractionally longer than in an English sentence. For example, English word order might produce the sentence: I will kill you. The listener knows just a bit earlier that killing is on the cards but has wait to learn who will be killed...them, or someone else.

By contrast, German word order goes: I will you kill. This means the listener knows something is about to happen to them, but has to wait for what it is. It could be love, it could be feed etc.

Or it could be kill.

Those crazy Germans.

The Black Prince said:

The listener knows just a bit earlier that killing is on the cards but has wait to learn who will be killed...them, or someone else.

By contrast, German word order goes: I will you kill. This means the listener knows something is about to happen to them, but has to wait for what it is. It could be love, it could be feed etc.

Or it could be kill.

Those crazy Germans.

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I'm sure conversation happens very quick usually and you wouldn't exactly be aware of waiting to hear the end of the sentence, but I found the idea so amusing lol

On that note, in some languages you have to wait to hear if, using the above example, the speaker has already killed someone, is going to kill someone or is killing someone right now. Basically, the "will" in a future tense involving killing would come at the end.

I'm sure the order of words in any language must indicate something about that culture. Not sure what the German order means, though. Perhaps they like suspense.

Just to totally confuse issues, some languages leave off some of the three elements because in real life they are understood.

Spanish, for instance, often leaves off the subject and the sentence becomes VO or even V if the O is optional. As in Yo soy Argentina might also be said Soy Argentina: "(I) am an Argentine woman."

So it's possible to have SV, SO, VO, S, V, and O. There are also English language equivalents for those six possibilities.

If you want a character to speak like Yoda in Star Wars, the order would be OSV.

And in inflected languages such as Latin, the function words serve in a sentence (subject, verb, object) is demonstrated by changes to each word's form, not by their relative placement.

Notes from a layperson (me):

Insight into syntax can be had looking at the debate teaching human language to non-human primates.

Language Learning in Non-human Primates has a bit of history and summary on the matter.

Aping Language In the 1970s, controversy erupted about whether these apes had been learning language or something simpler. Behaviors that had been described in linguistic terms could be reduced to behavioral principles; Terrace contested Rumbaugh’s claim that Lana’s “sentences” reflected an understanding of syntax, asserting that they were simply chained associative responses. Given that other species, such as pigeons, can learn associative chains, Terrace argued that Lana’s productions were not language. Terrace placed grammar at the center of his definition of language because it is key to generating an indeterminate number of sentences from a finite number of words. ...

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Rumbaugh proved this assertion wrong.

Additionally, the potential to understand elements of syntax is present in apes. Like human children, apes raised in language-enriched environments exhibit word order preferences, categorize symbols semantically, and use language pragmatically.
...

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There are some great videos from Rumbaugh's research where the researchers give the bonobos instructions. Those that have been taught human language since early ages follow syntax dependent instructions. Put the bowl in the salt differs from put the salt in the bowl. Criticism of the results being no more than learned sequences are unconvincing.


Languages often differ in syntax. English and Spanish have different word orders for adjectives, for example. Yoda's syntax is recognizable as different that the usual English language word order but it's still recognizable because we recognize the syntax despite it being altered.