Subject Verb Object

In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO) is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages are classified according to the dominant sequence of these constituents of sentences. This sequence is the most common. English, Chinese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Khmer, the Romance languages, Russian, Bulgarian, Kiswahili, Hausa, Yoruba, Nahuatl, Quiche, Guarani, Javanese, Malay and Indonesian are examples of languages that follow this pattern.

An example of this order in English is:

Sam ate the oranges.

In this, Sam is the subject, ate is the verb, the oranges is the object.

Some languages are more complicated: in German and in Dutch, SVO is often considered basic since this is the unmarked order in declarative main clauses. However, any other constituent may come before the verb instead of the subject which then must follow immediately after the verb. Furthermore, in certain subordinated sentences as well as in infinitive phrases, the verb comes last, as do removable parts of the verb in declarative main clauses. This is called V2 word order.

See Also

• Subject Object Verb
• Verb Subject Object

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Wikipedia:Subject Verb Object

This article is part of a series on Grammar and Syntax. (Click to View) Grammar: Accusative absolute * Animacy Hierarchy * Aspect * Degrees of volition * Dual * Fluid-S * Mood * Nouns * Number * Person * Pro-Drop * Pronouns * Suffixaufnahme * Tense * Word order Syntax: Morphology * Morphological type * Morphosyntactic alignment * Nominative absolute * OSV * OVS * SOV * SVO * VOS * VSO