# Linguistics: Word order in languages **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 9, 2020, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178 "2020-01-09T16:52:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/41 "2020-01-12T08:58:12Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > I translated several other short English statements into Romanian and every time I came up with OVS-type structures. “Okay,” I said to myself. “Let me think like a linguist. How would I proceed with this if I wanted to establish whether Romanian was an SVO or OVS language?” Well, a linguist would not start from a statement like “I will transmit it,” but rather “The military will transmit the message,” where both the subject and object are nouns. And I have to admit that the Romanian translation shows an SVO-type structure: “Militarii vor transmite mesajul.” However, as soon as the speaker uses a pronoun for the object instead of a noun, the OVS-type structure becomes the norm. “The military will transmit it” -\> “Il vor transmite militarii.” But because word order is less rigid in Romanian, it is possible to use an SOV-type structure as well. That happens in Spanish as well, and we make it even more fun with our custom of elliding subjects. _Los militares enviarán el mensaje a sus aliados._ The military will send the message to their allies. _Los militares lo enviarán a sus aliados._ The military will send it to their allies. _Los militares se lo enviarán_. The military will send it to them. _Se lo enviarán._ [Somebody that you’re supposed to already know] will send it to them. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/42 "2020-01-12T09:11:54Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > That seems a little unrealistic, though. Even a flexible language like Russian tends to have a preferred ordering. It kind of has to, since going out of order is typically tool for emphasis. It is like saying that Asian languages are specifically tonal while a language like English is not: while technically true, IME, a large amount of information in spoken English is carried in tone (as well as cadence), and often an indistinct utterance can be resolved through its melody (here, the rigidity of order can be immensely helpful). Whenever anyone says English doesn’t rely on tones AT ALL, my go-to example is “I’m going to record and record.” There are actually a lot of examples in English where the word is exactly the same except for the syllable which is stressed, and it’s pretty consistent that the noun form is stressed on the first syllable, and the verb form on the second. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/43 "2020-01-12T09:14:47Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > And there’s this: Is that from “The Awful German Language”? very, very funny. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/44 "2020-01-12T10:29:26Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Whenever anyone says English doesn’t rely on tones AT ALL, my go-to example is “I’m going to record and record.” There are actually a lot of examples in English where the word is exactly the same except for the syllable which is stressed, and it’s pretty consistent that the noun form is stressed on the first syllable, and the verb form on the second. But stress is not tone. Tone means change of pitch. English is a stress-accent language, not a pitch-accent language. Stressed syllables may have a higher pitch than unstressed syllables, and be held longer, but that is not the same thing as tone. English [uses tone](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/intonation) to indicate shades of meaning in a sentence. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/45 "2020-01-12T11:08:10Z")
It’s more than just stress. Your voice actually does go up for re-CORD and down for RE-cord. It doesn’t make English a tonal language, any more than the fact that there is the the vestige of a genitive case makes English a declined language; mainly, if a person who is Deaf, a non-native speaker, of speaker through bad electronic transfer or broadcast equipment doesn’t get the tones right, usage and syntax will most likely make it entirely understandable anyway. This is still something I like to throw out there when I’m trying to educate people about the difficulty Deaf people have learning to speak an oral language, and 1) shouldn’t be forced to, and 2) should have it only as a back-up-- they should always have their country’s sign language first. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/46 "2020-01-12T13:00:52Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > That happens in Spanish as well, and we make it even more fun with our custom of elliding subjects. > > _Los militares enviarán el mensaje a sus aliados._ The military will send the message to their allies. > _Los militares lo enviarán a sus aliados._ The military will send it to their allies. > _Los militares se lo enviarán_. The military will send it to them. > _Se lo enviarán._ [Somebody that you’re supposed to already know] will send it to them. And, especially in speech, as with Romanian, putting the subject at the end is rather common (and getting more common, I read somewhere): _Se lo enviarán, los militares._ The soldiers will send it to them. (Often, the comma is omitted). This is becoming yet more common in colloquial French, according to an article I could dig up if anyone cared. ---
**Author:** ![Cayuga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Cayuga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cayuga)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/47 "2020-01-12T15:18:55Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > Klingon is OVS, because … alien. There are a number of linguistic in-jokes like that built into the language, where it has some feature that is rare or absent in natural human languages. I recently saw an interview with the guy who invented Belter for _The Expanse_. He mentioned that the guy who invented Klingon deliberately made every choice based on what was least common or non-existent in Earth languages. ---
**Author:** ![Cayuga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Cayuga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cayuga)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/48 "2020-01-12T15:21:56Z")
> [@LynnM](#): > > Years ago somebody told me that in German, you can say in effect: > > “Throw the horse over the fence some hay.” > > …but it’s confusing in English because word order is critical. By high school best friend used to tease (lovingly) his grandparents for the way they spoke English. His go-to example was “Throw me down the stairs my hat.” The odd thing is, they were from Spain. I didn’t think Spanish worked that way. ---
**Author:** ![Cayuga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Cayuga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cayuga)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/49 "2020-01-12T15:25:12Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > It’s more than just stress. Your voice actually does go up for re-CORD and down for RE-cord. Mine doesn’t. I’ve just tried a dozen sentences with different … intents, I guess (agreeing with someone, correcting someone, etc.). My voice either had the same pitch for each syllable in both words or went down in both words. ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/50 "2020-01-12T15:25:46Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > That happens in Spanish as well, and we make it even more fun with our custom of elliding subjects. > > _Los militares enviarán el mensaje a sus aliados._ The military will send the message to their allies. > _Los militares lo enviarán a sus aliados._ The military will send it to their allies. > _Los militares se lo enviarán_. The military will send it to them. > _Se lo enviarán._ [Somebody that you’re supposed to already know] will send it to them. Your examples, however, include two objects. They look the same as Romanian - probably a little bit easier, but I’m not sure. I find it entertaining to delve into this topic a little bit, so I’ll try to come up with several more examples. (a) SUBJECT & OBJECT = NOUNS The actors will dance the tango. (SOV) -\> Actorii vor dansa tangoul. (SOV) (b) SUBJECT = NOUN ; OBJECT = PRONOUN The actors will dance it. (SOV) -\> Il vor dansa actorii. (OVS) OR The actors will dance it. (SOV) -\> Actorii il vor dansa. (SOV) Given the various word orders in their language, Romanians have more options to play with emphasis. Written sentences lack intonation, but the subject and object can be stressed differently depending on whether one chooses OVS or SOV. (c) SUBJECT & OBJECT = PRONOUNS They will dance it. (SOV) -\> Il vor dansa ei. (OVS) OR They will dance it. (SOV) -\> Ei il vor dansa. (SOV) Again, the subject and object are stressed differently, depending on whether one chooses OVS or SOV. If one wants to lay no stress on either the subject or the object, one should leave the subject out: They will dance it. (SOV) -\> Il vor dansa. (OV) This is possible because in Romanian the subject is included in the verb form. Initially I wanted to give examples of sentences where two objects are used, such as “My colleague will offer flowers to the pianist” (SOV) -\> “Colega mea va oferi flori pianistului” (SOV), and see how things change dramatically when one object turns into a pronoun, and then the second object turns into a pronoun, or maybe the other object turns into a pronoun, and finally the subject turns into a pronoun, but the whole demonstration would be unbearably tedious. I think it is already clear that the ability to choose whether to leave the subject out or not, and whether to start with the object or the subject gives Romanians more choices to lay the stress, especially in writing. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/51 "2020-01-12T15:29:50Z")
I picked those examples to be able to show how both DO and IO behave when pronominalized. The examples work exactly the same if you eliminate the IO. They are also simplified and picked from a whole slew of other options, because I wanted to show only a specific subset of features. ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/52 "2020-01-12T16:10:05Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > And, especially in speech, as with Romanian, putting the subject at the end is rather common (and getting more common, I read somewhere). I think specialists should look not only into simple sentences but also into compound sentences because communication rarely occurs as a series of simple sentences. I have just realized that in a compound sentence (where there are more than just one subject), the second subject will often lie at the end (both in speaking and in writing - so, it is not a matter of formal vs informal). e.g. English: The soldiers will execute what the general will command. [SV] + [SV] Romanian: Soldatii vor executa ce va comanda generalul. [SV] + [VS] This is a formal, neutral statement. If I choose to make the sentence even longer by adding “until the president shows up (=appears in Romanian)”, the third subject will also lie at the end: “pana cand va aparea presedintele.” This causes numerous expressed subjects to lie at the end in Romanian. In formal, neutral statements. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2020, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/53 "2020-01-12T16:44:16Z")
UY Scuti writes: \> . . . communication rarely occurs as a series of simple sentences. Except in Pirahã. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2020, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/54 "2020-01-13T17:44:24Z")
The Spanish and Romanian examples are holdovers from Latin which tended to prefer the verb at the end of the sentence (SOV). At some point, people starting moving the object to the end of the sentence if it wasn’t a pronoun. Maybe this was because the non-pronoun object represented new information and they wanted to emphasize it. But the pattern SOC was retained where the object(s) were pronouns. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2020, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/55 "2020-01-13T17:49:52Z")
One can draw a distinction between languages where the word order conveys meaning and those where it does not. For example, in English, \ and \ mean two different things. In Russian, as long as you put the proper endings on the nouns, it is clear who is the eater and who is the meal; no matter the order. Ivan ciel crocodila (Ivan ate the crocodile) Ivana ciel crocodil (The Croc ate Ivan) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2020, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/56 "2020-01-13T18:39:43Z")
Yes, in the terminology others have been using, Russian is an inflected language. ---
**Author:** ![wei\_ji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wei\_ji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wei_ji)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2020, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/57 "2020-01-13T19:15:29Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I don’t know much about Greek, but Latin is also highly inflected. The main importance of word order in Latin is for associating modifiers: An adjective must be adjacent to the noun that it’s modifying (usually after, but it can be before) (and likewise for adverbs and verbs). This can still lead to ambiguities: For instance, “puer felix puellaque ambulatis” could be “the happy boy and the girl walk”, or it could be “the boy and the happy girl walk”. But you could remove the ambiguity, if you want, by changing the word order, such as “felix puer puellaque ambulatis”. > > The story is told that some ruler once asked the Oracle what would happen if he went to war, and the answer used this sort of ambiguity to mean either “you will go, you will return, you will never die”, or “you will go, you will never return, you will die”. The perfect oracle. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2020, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/58 "2020-01-13T20:22:04Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > One can draw a distinction between languages where the word order conveys meaning and those where it does not. For example, in English, \ and \ mean two different things. In Russian, as long as you put the proper endings on the nouns, it is clear who is the eater and who is the meal; no matter the order. Ivan ciel crocodila (Ivan ate the crocodile) Ivana ciel crocodil (The Croc ate Ivan) That is kind of inaccurate. The ending you are showing is the genitive, not the accusative. Both Иван and крокодил are masculine, which means that the accusative is identical to the nominative (singular and plural, except for the few animate masculine words that end in -а or -я). Your construction does makes sense in the context of the “partitive genitive”, in which case it would translate to “Ivan ate some of the crocodile” or “the crocodile ate some of Ivan”. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2020, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/59 "2020-01-13T21:49:09Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > That is kind of inaccurate. The ending you are showing is the genitive, not the accusative. Both Иван and крокодил are masculine, which means that the accusative is identical to the nominative (singular and plural, except for the few animate masculine words that end in -а or -я). > > Your construction does makes sense in the context of the “partitive genitive”, in which case it would translate to “Ivan ate some of the crocodile” or “the crocodile ate some of Ivan”. Oops, it’s been a long time since my last Russian class. Maybe I should have used an example with feminine nouns. Thanks for the correction. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2020, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178/60 "2020-01-13T22:06:02Z")
If the nominative and accusative are the same, then how would one disambiguate that sentence? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/linguistics-word-order-in-languages/846178.md?page=4)