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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 มี.ค. 2023
- There are six basic word orders. Which languages have different ones and where? Why is this one so rare?
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~ Briefly, but with small spoilers ~
When I was young, I got interested in how sentences are arranged in various languages. When my grammar books treated basic word orders as different types of languages, I began to imagine them as a linguistic horoscope. I'm back with animated questions about that language zodiac:
- What even is word order?
- How many languages have different ones and where?
- Why is SOV so common and OSV so rare?
Along the way, we'll realize that the two least common word orders, OVS and OSV, are found among the languages of the Amazon. Check out my sources document above to even more.
![[TH]FFWS SEA Spring 2024 Knockout Stage - Day 12](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/DVnFpe52UV4/mqdefault.jpg)
In Czech and most probably all Slavic languages you can use all word orders and still make complete sense because of word declensions, which makes the languages super flexible, its also very useful for poetry or such things since you can make sentences sound more beautiful
Example in polish: Poles love Hungarians
Polacy kochają Węgrów (common)
Polacy Węgrów kochają
Węgrów kochają Polacy (common)
Węgrów Polacy kochają
Kochają Polacy Węgrów
Kochają Węgrów Polacy
In Russian, which has no articles, the new/old information is determined by the word order most of the time
A classic example of pela ptitsa/ptitsa pela
Pela ptitsa is the answer to "what/who was singing?" - a bird was singing
Ptitsa pela - what was the bird doing? - the bird was singing.
Not 100% foolproof and consistent with just word order but can be very useful
@@Bauvolk It would also be possible in Hungarian :)
For example: Hungarians love Poles
A lengyeleket a magyarok szeretik. OSV [This form gives a strong emphasis on the subject (Hungarians)]
A lengyeleket szeretik a magyarok.
A magyarok szeretik a lengyeleket.
A magyarok a lengyeleket szeretik.
Szeretik a magyarok a lengyeleket.
Szeretik a lengyeleket a magyarok.
Even though it is grammatically legal to switch words around, S-V-O still feels "the default one" and others feel like a bit like deviations
@@jfcdefg also true!
Hello, I'm a speaker of Libras, and I have been studying sign language linguistics for some time, so I really think I can enrich the knowledge on Libras' word-order aspect. IMO, many Sign Languages cannot be properly included in word-order categories due to their inner rules being completely different from the way spoken languages work. While many spoken languages use word-order to demonstrate a syntactic aspect (English and Chinese being good examples), Sign Languages usually don't do that in the same way, since they work within a 3D environment whose rules work more or less like how objects are organized within the world.
Let's take into consideration the use of OSV in Libras. This word order is more common when you need to specify the place in which something happens, for example: "BEACH + I + SWIM", or "SCHOOL + I + GO". The reason the object is the first thing in these phrases have to do with a beach being a place that needs to be there in the first place for you to be able to swim in it, and the same thing goes for the school. If you sign "I + SWIM + BEACH" it sounds illogical, because you swim in something, but the swimming couldn't have been done in the beach, since it existed after the swimming took place. So the rule is basically that the place in which something is done needs to be signed before the verb. For example "BEACH I SWIM" (OSV), "BEACH + SWIM" (OV, the S being implied), and "BEACH + SWIM + I" (OVS), I + BEACH + SWIM (SOV) are all legitimate ways to say that "I swim in the beach" in LIBRAS.
Another reason why OSV is relatively common in LIBRAS (and other sign languages less influenced by the spoken language) is due to the existence of directional verbs. For example, "ME + HE + PUNCHED (in the face)" is totally acceptable, since the verb "PUNCH" is directional, so independently of the order, you will be able to know who got punched due to the directional aspect. And the use of "ME" here is totally optional, and used more for emphasis, so it would be treated more like "it was me whom he punched", and "HE + PUNCHED (me in the face)" is completely acceptable and more common still. I'm planning to make a video on how sign languages work soon, so if you're interested in learning more about that, you just need to wait for a while.
Very appreciative you took the time to add to my understanding! The paper I read focused on "intensional" vs "extensional events" in Libras, so it is lovely to have more context around this because of your words.
@@NativLang You're welcome!
Looking forward to that video!
Verb agreement in sign languages is a fascinating subject.
@@qwertyTRiG Indeed it is, and blew my mind when I learned about it.
As has been noted, Slavic languages can use any word order. The word order doesn't matter for us Slavs, but, similarly to Korean, apparently, may denote shades of meaning (and SOMETIMES what's the meaningful part. E.g. in Russian:
SVO Капибара съела кукурузу. = Capybara ate corn. (That's what happened)
VSO Съела капибара кукурузу. = Capybara ate corn. (It did. Finally)
SOV Капибара кукурузу съела. = Capybara ate corn. (Has eaten. I've checked)
OVS Кукурузу съела капибара. = Capybara ate corn. (It was indeed capybara)
VOS Съела кукурузу капибара. = Capybara ate corn. (The end)
OSV Кукурузу капибара съела. = Capybara ate corn. (May be capybara hasn't eaten something else, but it definitely ate corn)
thinking how corn ate capybara is so wild. thank you for your explanation and examples too though
@your neighbour that makes sense then 🤔 i tried learning almost 10 years ago and kind of wanna try again (i can still semi read the letters 😅)
In korean there is only 1 rule "VERB IS FINAL" there rest of the sentence does not matter what order.
나는 밥을 먹어 I eat rice
밥을 나는 먹어 I eat rice
Depending on what you want to enphasize use one or the other.
@@i369j i thought it could be any way around 😮 i always tried to stick with the first example though
@@LightBluPikachu My teacher also says there are "unwritten rules": this sounds better at beginning, this after that, etc. But when using formal language ending in verb is the rule.
Teaching a Slavic language, I realized that teaching (and learning) a language that has one (dominant/only) word order is easy but teaching (and learning) a language with a flexible word order is very difficult. In Czech, SVO is usually neutral. But everything else is possible, the only question is what you want to emphasize and what implicit (or even explicit of course) question your sentence answers. In simple sentences it may be easier but with more complex ones, even identifying the neutral word order is sometimes challenging.
To be fair, most languages are quite flexible in terms of word order. It's just done a bit differently. For example, in synthetic languages, like the Slavic ones, you can move words around but you have to use the right case markers to show what's the subject and object. In analytical languages, like English, you can often use auxiliary words or placeholders to move words around.
The same in German!
@@schwammi Yes, after all, Czech is just translated German. :D Even though not perfectly, some words have fixed position in German. Think of Partizip Perfekt. And verbs in general (if you have the verb first, it's a question), so if I am not mistaken, you can only really move with subjects and objects (from SVO trinity). In Slavic languages, you can move more or less everything.
Word order in Bulgarian is SVO.
I only noticed that you can use any order in Russian after watching this video. I've never thought about it before for Russian, I have thought about it for Japanese (which I'm currently learning) and English though which is weird
The map at 7 minutes would've benefited from showing each ordering in isolation briefly.
Once the map becomes crowded by more common orderings, it is difficult to spot where other orderings were added.
I think that was intentional, showing how rare these other types seem. Still would’ve appreciated a quick glance at all 6 colors with their own map though!
And if one is color-blind, it gets even worse
@@dylath2304 But it does the opposite. The more crowded the map is, the less visible any given change is. So merely uncommon languages aren't really any easier to spot this way than incredibly rare languages are. So it just takes away from the point instead.
It's like wearing sunglasses at night because you can "see the darkness better" that way... It misses the point of what vision is really used for. You perceive things using contrast, not absolute luminosity. The goal isn't to see the darkness, it's to see _in_ the darkness.
@@Gamesaucer I agree, that’s why I said I would’ve liked a separate map to be shown for each type
@@dylath2304 I just think you start with smallest first... let that sink in and discuss it for a few moments, before the 2nd & 3rd least common.
With that you can show the 3 most used types, but try and get them as distinct in colours as we can... maybe even star a few examples for those who are colour-blind (if this much research has been done for the use of basic word order, I figured finding a chart of what certain colour-blind individuals can & can't see well should be relatively easy to find).
Fun fact: when designing Klingon, Mark Okrand chose OSV as the default word order specifically because it's the rarest in human languages. He also chose a set of sounds that are extremely unlikely to be found in any natural human language, because of how our languages tend to fall with sounds.
Klingon uses OVS not OSV
@@DoctorDeath147 correct, Klingon is primarily OVS. Though, just like natural languages, there is some flexibility to it.
It was also because it was the inverse of SVO.
@@godminnette2 no flexibility in Klingon basic sentences, which is what the word order type refers to.
Not that rare if the largest language groups in europe use OSV and other forms in their language . English is one it doesnt work with .
We definitely use OVS in Zambian Sign Language. It helps make the direction of the signs clear.
"Capybara ate corn" works, but the verbs are usually directional. You'd be directing the action to an object you haven't defined yet.
It's more vibrant to define the corn in space, then define the capybara in another location, and then direct the eating action from eater to eaten. That can easily work for OSV, and does.
I hope that's clear.
You have to direct the object after you define what it is in sign language. Wow that's very reasonable. I totally understand why
that's very clear, and makes ALOT of sense for when connecting two things with an action!
That's so cool!
This makes so much sense. Very cool.
SOV would also work though, right?
My native Polish leans towards SVO, which sounds the most natural. But due to a case system, you can use a different word order, especially if the topic of your sentence is is different than the subject. So the topic is marked by order and the subject by case.
I was astonished that at no point he mentioned Slavic languages which can use all word orders to make a correct sentence based on emphasis.
@@blfr508 If I understand the concepts of focus and topic correctly, then Slavic languages work in the same way, that was described there:
Kukurydzę kapibara zjadła - The topic is the corn, the focus is capybara (As for the corn, it was a capybara tha ate it)
Kukurydzę zjadła kapibara - corn is both topic and focus (As for the corn it was eaten by a capybara)
@@zefciu
>Kukurydzę kapibara zjadła
In this case, the emphasis is on "zjadła". This sentences answers the question "Co kapibara zrobiła z kukurydzą?" (What did the capybara do to the corn?)
> Kukurydzę zjadła kapibara
In this case, the emphasis is on "kapibara". Because it's an answer to the question "Co zjadło kukurydzę?" (What ate the corn?)
Same with Latin. It was SOV by default, but with free variation (used for emphasis) thanks to the case system
Yep! The word order being flexible thanks to the case system is also useful for poetry and such.
I got lost reading about this. I'm back. Here's what I found out.
Always great when you take us along with you down that rabbit hole
So can we expect a follow-up video about V2, VF and free word orders? The ants in the system, as it were? I for one would love to see that.
What do you mean yoda speaks backwards in English and Brazilian Portuguese? Why the specific mention of Brazilian portuguese, does he not speak like that in other languages? (obviously Brazilian here)
Osvaldo
Reading on gpt perhaps?
I love your grammar-focused vids. Word order is definitely a description of a language's general behavior rather than a concrete rule. I'm a Turkish speaker, and the standardized Turkish word order is very strictly SOV. It's almost impossible to find an official document or piece of media that uses anything other than SOV if it wants to be taken seriously by anyone. Teachers often scold kids for deviating from the sacred SOV, so much so that a sentence that breaks the SOV rule is called "devrik tümce" (knocked-over sentence) in Turkish. And yet, as much as 50% of spoken Turkish sentences break the SOV rule, with SVO, OSV, VSO and VOS all occurring quite frequently depending on what the speaker wishes to emphasize.
Suuuch an instructive comment, loving that you actually have a term for "incorrect" scrambled word orders.
Northeastern Brazilian Portuguese is also like this. Portuguese is mainly SVO, but we usually deviate from it quite often here.
@@NativLang "Devrik tümce" is just the Turkish term for inverted sentences.
@@erkinalpThe difference is that in spoken Turkish, every possible word order (or at least most of them) can be understood, and furthermore,can be used in a natural setting. In languages with a truly fixed word order, such as English, word order cannot be inverted or change in any possible way without at best sounding like Yoda or Shakespeare and at worst completely failing to get your message across.
That's so weird for a language with a robust case system
I'm a Spanish speaker and I still remember my lessons about this topic when I was a child. I remember I used to like how Spanish may be SVO commonly like in "Él comió la manzana" but also VSO "comió él la manzana" or even OVS "la manzana la comió él" the last ones aren't common, but exist to emphasize different parts of the speech, I used to like that versatility about the language
all of them mean "he ate the apple"
@@QuantumScratcher thats the point.
I also think that all the ones that aren't SVO are used mostly in poetry or things like it
I've spoken sometimes inthe last order "la tele la apagué ya" at least in my country (chile) is not so uncommon in informal speech
OVS are quite comon on the following structure: me gusta el chocolate
I was really glad to see a sign language mentioned. The whole time I was hoping you'd talk about ASL. It often uses OSV sentence and despite what many think it's not like English
me too!
I speak a language with "free" word order (Finnish)
The different word orders are used when languages like English would use stress and emphasis in speech
In other words, the language can sound a bit monotone but still can emphasise certain words or topics in sentences
That's super cool! Hard to wrap my head around trying to communicate like that as the only languages I speak are English, French and a bit of Spanish, so word order feels pretty rigid in my mind.
Same happens in Russian and Ukrainian. There's even a textbook example of this children learn quite early: "мама мыла раму, раму мыла мама" ("mom was washing the frame, the one who was washing the frame was mom")
Bro im finnish and i didnt even realize
@@rgal the fact that russia and ukraine has very similar culture makes me sad that theyre hating each other now.
@@rizkyadiyanto7922 It's always sad when someone is bullied, and it's quite common bully and the bullied one share similar or even the same culture; because same culture =/= same particular interests.
In russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian we can shuft between all 6 word orders, but rarer types are used mostly in literature and old slavic sagas
the regular word order is usually the most neutral. e.g. some word order(s) may show annoyance and by using it, one can offend someone
In German you can do that, too
In _Pervoije Svidania_ (A. Beli), it's extensively used in thought-rhyme couplets: Say something in one order, then repeat it in another.
Same here in Bangla language
i think all slavic languages can do that (at least czech and slovak are the same in this regard)
We typically think of English as an SVO language, but I have noticed that MANY older English texts VERY often switch up word order, all depending on context and focus. In fact, this seems to be very traditional and common in English. It seems that the spread of English as a trade, and now global language has not only vastly simplified its vocabulary, but has more or less standardized its word order and has made the language MUCH more direct. Kinda sad, but interesting to consider just how flexible English really is and can be spoken.
Which texts for example?
@@eiramram2035 Tolkien messed with word order when he wanted things to sound extra Old English-y
@@eiramram2035 Use your brain.
I got here researching OSV in east coast US English dialects - its used for emphasis in the New York/New Jersey ethnic dialects. Someone has to have studied it...
@@philiptetlockenjoyer5854 YES INDEED!! I grew up obsessed with Tolkiens high fantasy world, and as a 6 and 7 year old I learned a vast majority of my vocab from the LOTR’s trilogy, as well as the Hobbit and Silmarillion later. I loved poetry as well and would often write my own playing with syntax and rhyme schemes. I was a very good writer for my age however it wasnt until I got to my high school honors english class(American Lit) that my amazing but very direct teacher pointed out that I often sound like yoda when I write!😂 😭 I also grew up studying Buddhist texts so im sure Pali/Sanskrit Sutras had an influence as well. But I didn’t know what syntax was until college, let alone the linguistic anthropological study of such. Absolutely captivated by this video I am 😅
In Hungarian, the verbs are split in two groups: those for which the 'subject' (as per the given definition) is conjugating it, and those for which the 'object' is conjugating it; this creates two possible interpretations for the word order possibilities. In common Hungarian, the user of the language will put the most important first, be it the verb, the object, or the subject, but by observing this all except OSV are just as common and valid word orders. If however, you consider that subject and object are exchanging their role with respect to the verb, one could also reason that all 6 word orders are occurring in common Hungarian.
i was thinking of the same. I'm not much into grammar so I was not sure.
In English (as well as German and surely many other European languages), you can come across OSV under certain circumstances and it does seem to fit perfectly into the idea of topic-first sentence structure.
Here's a nonsense example sentence:
"Have you found them?"
"The green one I have, but the red one I am still looking for."
So, even though for us Europeans (or IE language speakers more specifically) topic is kind of an exotic and tough to grasp concept, we do seem to an intuitive understanding of it, in the few places it does show itself in our languages.
In Yiddish-English, OSV is not uncommon when used for emphasis:
*A doctor* he calls himself? I feel worse now than when I came to his office!
Yeah but it's pretty common in all languages that the word order changes in a question sentence. I speak a slavic language and you can use any and all the word orders in a normal sentence, since we have grammar that infuses nouns and verbs with a lot of extra meaning (so you never confuse a subject with an object or to who/what the verb is referring to). For the same reason most sentences don't have a subject, especially if that subject is "I" aka. the person saying it
"us Europeans"
Gee, thanks
@@redhidinghood9337 He's not referring to the question, but to the answer to that question.
@@starry_lis This is the "exclusive we" (speaker + others, but not the listener), rather than the "inclusive we" (speaker + listener, possibly with others as well). English, unfortunately, does not make the distinction, but some other languages do.
For me as a Japanese speaker, the standard word order definitely leans toward SOV, but it's a lot more flexible than it seems on the surface. In general, as long as the verb goes at the end, most of the information before it can be moved around or omitted entirely, so there can occasionally be sentences that are phrased with OSV. When I think to times that myself or friends have done this in conversation, it's often a way of shifting emphasis.
Same in Korean thanks to grammatical particles
German is the other way around, the verb has to come second, but it isn't uncommon to put them at the end and use auxiliary verbs.
@@HappyBeezerStudios Yes, but SVO and OVS are both possible: "Der Hase frisst den Salat" und "Den Salat frisst der Hase". V first is "question order": Frisst der Hase den Salat?" (VSO) (I'm not sure if "Frisst den Salat der Hase?" is only really rare or "not really possible").
It's really better to think of Japanese (as a non-speaker) as what he mentioned above: topic-predicate, because really that is the basic structure of a Japanese sentence. The topic may be optional, but there will generally always be a predicate (even if it is just a verb or adjective).
@@HappyBeezerStudios"Das Wasserschwein frisst die Gemüse" (SVO) im Vergleich zu "Das Wasserschwein hat die Gemüse gefressen" (SOV)
As a Korean and Japanese speaker, I appreciate this pointing out that it is not just SOV or SVO, especially that Korean (and in-turn Japanese as well) is not just SOV but also can be natural to find OSV. It is hard to explain this to others who are confused why the word order, outside of the verb, may not typically matter because the subject(s) and object(s) are marked. This was a great explanation!
It really more topic-predicate structure in fact.
Chinese here and SVO absolutely rules the "normal" sequence.
Can you show an example in Japanese language for OSV? I know in daily speech, we often abbreviate the subject because we don't need it. So the sentence is OV most of the time.
@@yo2trader539
for example
姉：「私のアイスOあんたS食べたでしょV？」
僕：「知らんけど、チョコアイスはO俺がS食べたよV。」
If I were to try to put it into English, it would be this
Sister: my ice cream you did eat?
me: dont know, but the chocolete ice cream i ate.
In Finnish, SVO is the "basic" order that you use to just state a fact, but all other orders are usable too; OVS is common if you want to emphasize a specific subject out of a number of options, and VSO can sometimes be used as a sort of assertion or affirmation that the action did happen or will happen. Or if you just start with "yes" or "no", SOV will also work as an assertive affirmation or negation. Though it gets weird because in negations the word for "no" conjugates as the verb and the actual verb doesn't; which is the verb then? At the same time, yes is just yes and doesn't affect other words.
The rest of them are more poetic, but still understandable.
Loved the message at the end. It's a blessing anytime you upload. You're just a holy grail of normalizing linguistic enthusiasm. And I never leave your videos without having learned something new. So, thank you for this
Thank youuuu!
@@NativLang Aaaah, I'm really glad now, this is the first time I've gotten a direct reply from you! No problem, thanks again for you doing you ❤️
As a Japanese speaker learning Korean, I think you should’ve pointed out that korean (and japanese) have particles(subject particle comes before subject, object particle comes before object) so changing sentence order is a lot easier to change.
In poetry, even VSO, SVO, is common
I guess he didn't mention it because a lot of languages have case marking. Take for example the Polish "Ala ma kota." ("Ala has a cat."). It has the "normal" word order of SVO. However, since Polish uses extensive case marking (so subject and object, among other things, are clearly marked by endings, a lot like the case clitics of Korean and Japanese), the word order is for the most part not fixed but free and mostly used to mark topic, comment and focus in a sentence. ("kota" is the accusative of "kot" (cat), meaning that it's marked as the direct object)
So, for example, "Ala kota ma." (literally "Ala a cat has.", SOV) can be used to mark the cat as the focus of the sentence and also stresses the verb. This sentence would for example be used to contradict someone who claims that Ala does not have a cat even though she does. I guess in the end you could translate the sentence into English as "Ala does have a cat".
Particles are homophones so too little particles so many entries, they work like postpositive but basic particles are semantically cases eg made is terminative, to is commitative case, but doesn't inflect, all sentences used head finals. Consistent and why japanese is the best type of cliff hanger language, the predicate is always at the last place adverb - subject\topic - object - predicate\verb
Reordering the structure really helps emphasize the meaning of sentences hence makes it more beautiful imho
Are you having trouble pronouncing korean words? Their ui, ee, oe, eu sounds are crazy. Japanese is completely opposite it was so simple in pronunciation like ra re ru re ro but reading kanji is hard
@@ouwyukha when I learned literature at school. I have a love/hate relationship with structure reordering. On one hand I'm continually amazed by how authors can manipulate word order so skillfully to generate emotions. On the other hand it is a pain in the ass to analyze them in literature analysis essays.
My mother has worked with plenty of Amazonian communities in Colombia, and she mentioned that one of the most interesting parts about her work was finding out how differently their language works. Basically, they tended to make the focus of their sentences the second person singular, not the first. In other words, they usually prioritize "you" in their language instead of "I". I always found that very remarkable. I don't know whether you could research the topic and make a video about it cause I feel like that would be extremely interesting. In any case, great video!
Just like with Korean and Maya, in Brazilian Portuguese you can also find OSV order when the object is used as the topic
The phrase "o milho, a capivara comeu" (lit: the corn, the capybara ate" would sound legitimate and natural in a context where you give emphasis to the corn as the topic. If we translate you it would be something like "about the corn, the capybara ate it"
It's a pretty common way to express yourself if you're giving a lot of small comments on different topics, so it's easier to keep track of what's important since the context does vary a bit if you're commenting about a lot of different things
I dont know why i decided to write it but i just want to say that i like the sound of brazilian portuguese a lot
It sounds so great a really like it
It’s same in spanish… We can do either order. It’s very normal, I wonder why many get surprised of that phenomena.
Lol, no one ever says “o milho, a capivara come”, unless it’s poetry.
@@AmokBR here's an example with the context:
- Sobrou algo para comer?
- Tá difícil... O pão tá mofado, o milho a capivara comeu, o cereal o cachorro roubou...
@@RodrigoDavy
- “Sobrou algo para comer” VSO
- “Tá difícil” SV
- “O pão tá mofado” SVO
- The other ones are OSV, but really weird.
It's kinda funny that even though different word orders can be difficult for new speakers, they all kinda make sense in their own ways
Like I speak Korean and English. English SVO makes sense because you have the subject doing something, and then you have the object being worked on. Meanwhile with Korean SOV, it makes sense because it's like having two actors in a play, and telling what one of them is doing to the other.
I guess it's really about the emphasis of the thought.
In Portuguese we use all six forms, and you’re right it has to do with what we are trying to emphasise. SVO would be more of a description. But VOS or VSO would sound like an order. SOV is something you would do together with someone else.
@@francogiobbimontesanti3826 Como usamos OSV?
@@ethandouro4334 Você viu a Maria? Puts, a Maria eu não vi!
ou como de um comentário de outra pessoa, "o milho, a capivara comeu" (se o tópico no contexto é o milho)
@@kzeriar25 Caramba, acho que já usei isso mais do que SVO em minha vida.
"O Carro, o João levou-o."
NativLang's video on Mayan verb tenses and time is neat because it discussed exactly that question: To what degree does a person's primary language shape the way they think and perceive the world around them?
"Eu fui à escola" SVO
"Eu o vi ontem" SOV
"Mas besteiras ele faz" OSV
"Dos meus problemas cuido eu" OVS
"Não queira você me enganar" VSO
"Fala com ela você, eu mal a conheço" VOS
These are all not only idiomatic but grammatically correct portuguese. You'll see word orders like these in both casual and formal contexts, spoken and written language. Very much like Latin.
In Spanish too!
yeah, and depending on the situation it's the normal order too, like "mas besteira ele faz", changing the order would kinda change the meaning
@@Gadottinho Exactly. I even like your example better.
Lew je kota
Lew kota je
Kota je lew
Kota lew je
Je lew kota
Je kota lew
All mean "A lion eats the cat" in polish, as you can see we don't even have to change words
@@Bauvolk What you're describing is called "grammatical cases". Portuguese doesn't have grammatical cases. Those are all different sentences that mean different things. Yet it shows that there's no one word order to rule them all in the vast majority of languages. Portuguese happens to be one in which every single one of those is used in a daily basis.
Tagalog is actually flexible. Example "Mark ate bread"
You can say "Kumain si Mark ng tinapay" (VSO), or "Si Mark ay kumain ng tinapay" (SVO) or, "Ang tinapay ay kinain ni Mark" (OVS but Past tense).
Ah, if I may, Tagalog doesn't technically have tenses actually! Its verbs encode verb aspect, but not tenses.
From what I can glean as well, it's pretty hard to use the terms "subject" and "object" when it comes to Tagalog, with quite a few linguists arguing that the syntactic roles of "subject" and "object" are really hard to apply to a lot of languages, including Tagalog. "Tinapay" and "Mark" have the semantic roles of patient and agent respectively, but some can argue that "tinapay" is still the subject, similar to English's passive voice (another matter that may or may not apply to Tagalog).
Nevertheless, I do wonder how flexible Tagalog really is relatively, however. Most certainly some languages are more flexible about this matter than others, so I do really wonder.
The deep dive into word orders was, like all of your content, enthralling! As a staunch opponent of needless categorisation, though, I also want to thank you for the slightly deeper point you made about labels and their usefulness. It's a topic I became weirdly passionate about in my last year of undergrad, and I credit a few of my professors with stoking those flames, and I am now firmly on team "why do you need a cross-linguistic category for that?"
Middle Egyptian (though unfortunately without speakers, since its descendants changed quite a bit about word order) is a fun one to classify with this. "Theoretically" it's a VSO language, but pronouns frequently push it to VOS and topic fronting (which can be marked or unmarked at speaker discretion) can create SVO languages as well. It's an excellent case study in why word order is so complicated and how it can create meaning.
Yeah, nouns vs. pronouns is also a thing in German, you usually say Ich habe es ihm gegeben, but ich habe ihm das Buch gegeben, es = das Buch, it has changed.
Lol ENGLISH IS EGYPTIAN. Lol
Hiero- hymnRO.🎼 - Glyphs / sound shapes 🎶
Real GENIUSES are being born. so all these words will be seen for what they really are.
Not everyone in this WORLD is as dumb as everyone else. Some people are laughing and dying at how dumb a lie can be but you all believe it. Self torture smh nasty concept Lol. 😅
@@hans6617 such a genius that thinks that words cannot have its meaning because he thinks the meaning he gave those words cannot be comprehend by others so that he has to type it in caps. What a lousy genius or should I say GENIUS?
Hebrew is weird like this too; literary Hebrew is a mix of VSO and SVO while vernacular Hebrew is mostly but not entirely SVO. And this stylistic distinction persists.
We also have ovs sometimes
@@Ella-dx6ll In passive? Cause I don’t think it counts
In Biblical Hebrew, aren't OSV structures sometimes created by chiastic parallelism?
What about gender polarity of noun?
SOV is very common in Tamil, but I find myself using OSV a lot when I speak Tamil. It depends on what I'm emphasising. Tamil conjugates every word so word order doesn't really change the meaning of the sentence, but it does change the emphasis and the main point of the sentence. EX: நான் பழத்தை சாப்பிட்டேன். (I the-fruit ate) VS பழத்தை நான் சாப்பிட்டேன் (The-fruit I ate). Very interesting video! Loved it
You do amazing work. Congrats on a million!
One of my favorite things about my native language Finnish, is that you can put SOV in any order and it makes sense and is grammatically correct. Thou many of those varitions sounds poetic and are not commonly used it everyday language and are advised against in professional language, but they are still grammatically valid. This is made possible by our countless wonderful conjugations.
Ex. Cat eats apple
Kissa syö omenaa
Kissa omenaa syö
Syö kissa omenaa
Syö omenaa kissa
Omenaa kissa syö
Omenaa syö kissa
For the apple to eat the cat, you would need to change the whole conjugation to "omena syö kissaa/kissan"
Same in Turkish. This must be a common feature for languages comming from around big steppe. I wonder Slavic languages took this feature from contact with languages like turkic and finish. Because as far as I know this is not common characteristic for indo European languages
SOV isn't general word order, it is specifically SOV. Once you change them around, it's not SOV anymore, so you can't say that you can put SOV in any order, SOV is a set order.
@@psaikologi I am pretty sure you understood what I meant... let me rephrase: you can but S, O and V in any order and it doesn't change the meaning
Even for basic Danish the order can be changed around a lot (though I cant think of an OSV and VOS example lol), which surprises me as Danish tends to be so.. boring? But if I take the same phrase as you, I can get
Katten spiser æblet - SVO, our common
Spiser katten æblet? - VSO, most all of our questions
Æblet, spiser katten det? - OVS, to make sure the cat indeed ate the apple
Katten, æblet spiser - SOV, something you'd find in a poetry book
Ofc this also depends on what the definition of a basic sentence is allowed to be. If emphasis is allowed, if questions despite being 25% of the sentences you'll ever say ever is allowed, etc. But I think it's really cool how much even a "simple" language can change :^D
Edit: Found one for OSV, "Æblet som katten spiser", but I still have yet to find something for VOS lol
@@AmalieLinden obviously, the catch here is that in Danish you can't define if cat and apple are subjects or objects without using the word order to signal that (some pronouns retain this quality, however, changing form based on if someone is the subject or object of an action. Try "she likes him"). The languages with flexible word orders mark the cat as the subject and the apple as the object by for example conjugation, at which point you will always know which one is which, regardless of what else you do with the sentence. There's no getting around this, but obviously the price of conjugation is adding a huge layer of complexity to the language.
I teach ASL to high schoolers, and the structure we use for most basic sentences is osv, but it can shift when you begin to use Pronominalization, indexing, and descriptive language
Came here to say the same thing. I'm a non-native signer with Deaf kid and partner. OSV is definitely the common norm for the native ASL signers I know. I mark myself as "think-hearing" when I sign SOV sentences.
Really? The only full sentences in ASL I ever learned were "Thank you," "I give to you" and "You give to me." It seemed like SVO to me. Or rather, the subject was blended into the verb and the object was shown based on the direction of the motion. It seemed like a polysynthetic language where the verb, subject, and object are inherent to the word itself and all blended together in one word.
@@slook7094 that is only true in specific circumstances where the sign is directional like the examples you gave for "give". If we take the english sentence "Im going to the store" for an example, there are 2 main ways to sign that, 1 being svo and the other being osv. I am going to use gloss to illustrate, each capatalised word I type is 1 sign. "ME GO STORE" or "STORE ME GO (ME)" I put that second me in parentheses because its technically grammatically correct to add that, but in casual conversation its dropped.
@@slook7094 If you wanted to say something more complicated, like "My mom gave me that book", the "ASL way" to sign it would be kind of like "That book? My mom gave me", or even "That book? My mom? She gave me." The "That book?" or "My mom?" isn't a question, it's an eyebrow raised "subject designation", but the facial grammar is similar to how we might do something like "Valley Speak" in english. So more precisely, it's like, "subject subject "
A lot of what we think of as "rhetorical questions" are just the normal way to sign certain types of things, at least where I am in the Bay Area CA. Like, you hardly ever see someone sign "because". To say "I went to the store because I need milk", you'd sign: "Store? I go. Why? Need milk." There's a different facial grammar for "asking a question" than a rhetorical transition like that, but it's the same hand signs, and questions repeat the question word or "?"-sign at the end, so "If you need milk, why did you go to a clothes store?" would be "Need milk you. Why clothes store go why?" so that your last visible sign is the question and it's clear that you're asking something and expect a response.
Congrats on the 1mil subs!!! Absolutely fantastic!!! Great video as always :D
Congrats on one million! Great work, whenever I pop in to a new video occasionally. :)
0:18, 4:55, 6:10 to clarify for non-linguists: expressions like _"most popular"_ and _"number one"_ in this video regarding SOV mean the significance of that basic word order *among languages* (not among speakers), i.e. there are more languages of language type SOV than of type SVO [source: see respective link in video description], even though numerous of languages are spoken by almost no one (anymore).
However, going by the top 45 most spoken languages [according to Ethnologue (2022, 25th edition) used by Wikipedia], the number of speakers of the SVO languages (like English, Mandarin, Spanish, French, Russian, Portuguese, German, Vietnamese, Swahili, Italian, Thai) surpasses with more than 2.5 billion *native* speakers even the sum of the respective *total* speakers (about 2 billion) of the SOV languages (like Bengali, Burmese, Hindi/Urdu, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Tamil, Telugu, Turkish), hence the most popular language type *among speakers* is SVO.
That sov svo osv classifications are silly. In most languages you can shift word order and still comprehensible. Except only I think English with strict word structures
In english even you can change it and still understand.
@@HappyBeezerStudiosit's get less viable but all options are understandable. English is very much about word form not sentence structure.
I am eating the apple.
The apple eaten by me.
The apple I am eating
I,this apple am eating.
Eating this apple I am (getting yoda now)
Eating I am, This apple.
One of my favorite word order facts is that even though Latin is an SOV language, many passages in the vulgate bible (a Latin translation of the Old and New Testament) are VSO to more closely match the word order of the Biblical Hebrew it’s translating from.
This works because Latin has a more flexible word order due to its case system
Latin has declination : ‘Marcus Mariam verberat’. Is the same as ‘Verberat Marcus Mariam’ or ‘Mariam Marcus verberat’. The order is free SOV is just the more frequent. In all cases Marius is beating Maria.
@@davidebacchi9030 What did Maria do?
@@davidebacchi9030 The term in English is "declension".
@@davidebacchi9030 Latin student here. Thank you very much for clarifying. I had learned that Latin was free word order as well, and was confused by OP’s comment. Thanks again!
@@akl2k7 and then there's japanese adjectival noun, where adjective inflects...
This is a very cool, informative, and entertaining channel. I wish that I had found it sooner rather than two days ago. I have always been interested in linguistics, but I never took a college course of it. I have studied a little bit of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, Farsi, Japanese, and more, but I haven't learned fundamentals of language that perhaps a linguistics textbook would help me learn. I always meant to learn the IPA, too. It's time for me to pick up a few linguistics textbooks. Thanks.
Thanks for this, very beautiful and thought provoking, I'm glad I got to watch it!
My first language is Brazilian Portuguese, and, despite it being mostly SVO, I notice that we also tend to use VOS and OSV in some contexts. I think it has something to do with the topic and focus as stated in the video. Also, loved that you mentioned Libras, I've been wanting to learn it for a long time, I think it's such a beautiful language.
One thing that stands out in portuguese is the freedom we can order our sentences. While, yes, SVO is the most common, stylistically we do shuffle this order very much. Using iterature as an example, we've got virtually all the orders possible and while some are scarcely used - even stylistically -, they're there as a possibility. Hell, even the "uneducated people" use these strange orders - surprisingly more often than the scholars or average people. They are even grammatical! Maybe I am being way too partial since it is my first language but I think there is something objectively and particularly appealing and beautiful regarding the way we play with word order.
(Also, sorry if I wasn't understandable. English is something I am not very good at - I'm learning though :P )
@@Wrest_1349 Spanish also does a lot of shifting from SVO even in colloquial contexts. I wonder if it's just comes from a tradition of general topic-oriented flexibility on the lower strata of iberian populations. (dating as back as the medieval times)
@@batt3009
"Eu fui a escola" SVO
"Eu o vi ontem" SOV
"Mas besteiras ele faz" OSV
"Dos meus problemas cuido eu" OVS
"Não queira você me enganar" VSO
"Fala com ela você, eu mal a conheço" VOS
These are all not only idiomatic but grammatically correct portuguese. You'll see word orders like these in both casual and formal contexts, spoken and written language. Very much like Latin.
@@calebsousa2754 My guess is it came from the morphological structure of latin verbs
@@chicoti3 Grammatically speaking, some unusual word orders were so frequent in portuguese that grammarians spent time and energy studying and classifying them. For example, things like "Hiperbáto" "Anástrofe" and "Sínquise" - figures of speech that deslocate words in the clauses - are colloquial some times. Towards the rural area of Brazil, these brutal and almost bizarre shiftings are just the way people talk normally.
In Turkish, though the "default" word order is SOV (we call such sentences "regular"), you can use different word orders to change emphasis. The emphasis is either on what precedes the verb, or the verb itself if it comes first. For example, all of the following sentences mean " I went home" with differing emphasis:
Ben eve gittim. (SOV - emphasis on object, in this case "home")
Eve ben gittim. (OSV - emphasises subject, as in "it was me who went home")
Gittim eve ben. (VOS - emphasis on verb)
Ben gittim eve. (SVO - emphasis on subject again)
Eve gittim ben. (OVS - you get the point)
Gittim ben eve. (VSO)
This feature of Turkish is reflected greatly in its poetry, and I'd say that SOV word order isn't strictly followed in everyday speech.
Edit: what I explained only holds for verb clauses
The funny thing is that I have realised besides SOV, OSV is the most common order that we use. Of course most of the time we don't use a subject and just indicate pronouns changing small things at the verb. Nevertheless, I guess this is what makes the Turkish poetry so rich and beautiful. One can change the order of the words to make them sound better and change the meaning ever so slightly and intricately. And it is fascinating that we really do use all of these orders (although some rarer than others) in the daily life. Just had an epiphany about my own language 😄😄
I'm learning Turkish and I find it fascinating that it is so flexible.
Duolingo could use a lesson from both of you like I just did.
I have a question about something I haven't fully grasped.
Erkek süt içer.
...yet
Erkek bir bira içer.
But is it necessary to to included that the man is drinking "a beer" or "one beer"? Is it a statement of volume or quantity of consumed drink that requires the inclusion of "bir"?
@@insanejughead No, "Erkek bira içer." would work just fine if the man is drinking any beer, and the sentence would mean "Man drinks beer.". As you've said, including "bir" could be used in both ways.
Greek is also pretty flexible; even though you could categorise it as SVO, since it has noun cases we can put words in any order without much issue. It is often done for emphasis or in more poetic language, but even in everyday speech it is very common to switch S, O and V places around.
In Tagalog, we can use different word orders. Tagalog is a complex language if you are learning it for the first time.
Si Jojo ay kumain ng saging.
Jojo ate banana.
SVO - Si Jojo ay kumain ng saging.
VSO - Kumain si Jojo ng saging.
VOS - Kumain ng saging si Jojo.
OVS - 'Yung saging kinain ni Jojo.
OSV - 'Yung saging si Jojo ang kumain.
SOV - Si Jojo, 'yung saging kinain niya.
The most natural sounding ones are SVO and VSO. Since they are the most common word orders that can be seen on paper, books, articles etc. It is more formal.
The other word orders are commonly used in conversational Tagalog. They too sound natural, but if a Filipino comes from another province (who speaks another language, he/she might need a second to understand the sentence)
This is an example only on a simple Tagalog sentence.
Now I see that my native Polish is quite flexible, thanks to declension of nouns. The most "natural" word order in most cases is SVO, however you often can hear OSV and OVS sentences. It depends what you want to focus on in your sentence.
We have a very similar situation in Turkish.
Bardzo uwielbiam jężyk polskiego 😍
- english-speaker
Thats what happenes in macedonain too!
@@Rabid_Nationalist I thought Macedonian didn't have a case system?
As a basque native (SOV), it feels weird to think about my language as a "top" thing in any category,, lol
I just found your channel today and wow, I so happy that yt recommend your shower of knowledge and curiosity.
Wow your animations skills have upgraded! Congrats! J'adore ta chaîne!
In Dutch word order varies a lot. The standard is SVO(V), one verb always fills V and if there are multiple verbs the rest goes to (V), but questions are rendered in VSO(V) and subordanate clauses in SOV. Additionally word order may vary to encode modal information, under the effect of conjunctions, or for the sake of preventing sentences in a row from sounding too much alike.
And the difference between subordinate and coordinate isn't based on meaning but on the specific conjunction used
Also, let us not forget the participle (voltooid deelwoord) which turns the standard SVO into OSV by adding an assisting verb beteen the O and the S. so "Jeff cooks food" ("Jeff kookt eten") becomes "The food is-being by Jeff cooking" (het eten wordt door Jeff gekookt).
Inversion is also almost always possible and results in OVS! For example:
Varken eet ik niet, maar moslim ben ik ook niet. 'Pig/pork I don't eat, but neither am I muslim.'
@@SenorZorros With the use of "worden" this is actually an example of the passive voice; which is a linguistic tool for having teh subject and object switch places in a sentance. Without passivisation it would be "Jeff heeft eten gekookt" or "Jeff has cooked food" in english, which is still SVO(V).
@@SenorZorros It's a passive construction, and the finite verb is 'wordt' in the second position, so that's OVS. The finite verb is the verb in S, V and O terminology, because that's the one that tells you the most about the syntactic structure. But it's a good point nonetheless that we often put our participles all the way at the end! Thinking about the 'information flow' point of view, it's definitely more relevant that the modal/auxiliary verb in these sentences!
I learnt basic korean and there I was taught that the sequence is not as important but the particle attached to the subject or object that makes their language make sense.
Congrats on 1 millions!! Well-deserved!
In Azerbaijani, a Turkic language, you can use any word order out there for different purposes, depending on which word you'd want to emphasize and get attention to, you'd put it first, and the rest can also follow a different order for the context, it works perfectly for poetry.
I speak Mizo, a OSV language and I have been having lots of questions about this. Thank you as always for englightening me.
Where this language is located?
@@HamoshekabekaSorry for the late reply, its spoken in North-Eastern India. It's a Tibeto-Burman language.
Part of the fun of learning japanese is these breakthrough moments in my brain when i feel like i'm starting to understand the inner rules more 🎉 the liberty to be flexible with order is fascinating and understanding how its used for emphasis is so eye opening 👁👁 i've started to see the conveyance of information in a whole new light, and this video was so timely!!
Also congrats!!! ❤❤🎉
So fun!! I've actually met people that speak Libras and Guarani, two of the 4 languages in the video. I actually use a couple Libras signs for signing worship music regularly (sign language actually helped me speak Portuguese early on bc I could see the Spanish spelling and understand the meaning and the was able to respond)
So enlightning ! as always ;) Thanks !
This reminds me of the discussions on passive voice. While gramatically passive voice in English is still SVO, _semantically_ it's closer to OVS. It is _also *highly frowned upon in academic writing._ English speakers have absolutely no problem with putting the actee before the actor, but we're also very discouraged from doing so in "proper" communication. In languages that have free word order without specific passive voice constructions I can see the same thing happening; they're used frequently, but not recorded as doing so.
P.S. The best order, Yodo uses.
"It [passive voice] is also *highly frowned upon in academic writing."
Are they STILL having that argument? Back in the mid 1980s I got caught between two professors, one held that passive voice was unacceptable, and one who held the author was unimportant and must not be be named or identified by pronoun. Everything "was done" or "was seen".
@@mikespangler98 Yup, still arguing that one. I certainly learned to avoid passive voice in my HS and undergrad days (graduated undergrad in 1984). I was studying biological sciences in undergrad, mostly. Then I worked for years doing typing and editing in academia, in molecular biology (hard science) and education (some psychology and “soft” science). Passive vs active voice in scientific editing is often about sentence LENGTH, since active voice is usually shorter. Then I switched my focus to personal communication, where passive voice is often used to disavow responsibility (eg, I spent the money, vs the money was spent). Now I’m back in academia studying counseling psychology (Master’s program), and I see both passive and active voice in papers. I FEEL like I see more passive voice in qualitative studies than in quantitative, but I could be wrong. I also suspect that, again, it depends on whether the writer wants to identify with the group they are studying, or distance themselves from the group under study.
I can well imagine how maddening it must have been to be caught between the two professors with their polarized viewpoints on this!
You mean when you're learning how to write, it's frowned upon. Passive voice is regularly used in academic journals because it exudes objectivity and distance. "The subjects were tested by the authors."
Passive not a normal structure because it eclipses the subject: it was done = someone did something. Peculiar usages do not make the grammatical structure of a language, exceptions don't make the norm. English is SVO and so are most Indeuropean languages, especially those which lost the declension system (declensions allow for more flexibility in word order as they inform the listener/reader or the role of each noun, without declensions that has to be solved by rigidity in word order, especially for the direct object, which typically lacks preposition = declension ersatz).
@@LuisAldamiz I didn't say English wasn't SVO. I said that English uses this construction to _approximate_ OVS while still grammatically being SVO. Of course strict word order itself is the exception rather than the rule and hard it is not to find non-SVO English text even without passive voice.
This is the first time I've noticed the top three-bottom three distinction, and I did so as soon as you mentioned the top three had something in common. This is why I love this channel 😍
I really like your inclusion of signed, as well as spoken, languages in these videos.
OSV is actually quite common in the hokkien language depending on how you view it. I'm surprised that there's little information about it in the internet. here are a few example sentences:
1.) OSV can be accomplished by inserting a particle "共伊 kāng-i" , or more commonly a contracted version of this particle, "共伊 kāi" in between the S and V. this is seen in a lot of simple and temporary sounding sentences.
English grammar: SVO: i ate fish.
hokkien grammar: OSV: fish i ("kai" particle) ate.
hokkien sentence: 魚我共伊食。 hî góa kāi chia̍h.
2.) OSV can also be accomplished by inserting "做 chòe" in between S and V. The use of "做 chòe" is to describe doing something in a somewhat regular or daily basis, or can also serve as one's occupation.
English grammar: SVO: I drive that car. *implying that that is my car and i do drive it in a daily basis*
hokkien grammar: OSV: that car is me (choe particle) drive of.
hokkien sentence: 彼個車是我做捍的。 hit-gê chhia sǐ góa chòe hōaⁿ--ê.
In Hungarian, you can change orders depending on which part (S, O or V) you want to emphasize. For example, "Marci megevett egy almát." = Marci ate an apple. This is the same order as the English sentence (SVO). We also use SVO order when we want to emphasize that MARCI ate an apple, "Marci evett meg egy almát." We can use OSV order when we really want to emphasize that an apple was EATEN by MARCI, "Egy almát Marci evett meg.". We use SOV when we emphasize the Object, in this case "alma", "Marci egy almát evett meg." means Marci ate an APPLE. We use OVS when we want to emphasize the number of how many apples Marci ate (in this case one), "Egy almát evett meg Marci." or we can also use it to emphasise that Marci ate an APPLE "Almát evett Marci." (but we left the "meg" prefix). And the last ones, VOS and VSO show the completeness of the action, "Megevett egy almát Marci./Megevett Marci egy almát".
This is so cool. Hungarian is so unique. Thanks for sharing!
In Swedish it's common with both SVO, VSO and OVS due to the V2-rule, even though we lack cases. In some expressions there's also SOV. It's common even in writing to see things like "The door locks the staff at..". But not OSV nor VOS.
I talspråk är väl VOS (inte OSV som jag skrev först) normalt, "sprang rakt in i väggen, dumfan" t.ex.
@@peterkerj7357 In English you can kind of do this sometimes in particular contexts, like “That, I know,” when “that” is something that someone just mentioned, or “Strange, that one” when talking about someone casually.
But it’s interesting to find out about Swedish
@@keegster7167 My hypothesis, that I have nowhere near enough knowledge to feel as confident about as I do, is that almost all languages will allow topic-comment constructions colloquially even if they're not used in a formal register because it just fits the way people think.
@@keegster7167 "That's true, true that", Spanish has the same thing with Cierto eso y eso es cierto
Hi, also based on my experiences most modern Indian languages are SOV, however Sanskrit and the Prakrits were pretty fluent with their word order and since those languages had a case system, writing the words in any order was okay because the meaning of the sentence could be easily identified by looking at the cases of individual words.
That being said a ton of modern Indian languages can be pretty fluent in their word order as well, especially in poetry and literature, whereas SOV is the preferred way for day-to-day communication.
Interesting topic and beautifully illustrated! I feel like it could have been dispatched more quickly with fewer rhetorical questions. You might have talked about British Sign Language too as that is "the key thing + what you want to say about it" which mostly pans out as OSV. One student had a breakthrough when she realised it was 'talk like Yoda'!
As a Korean, having sentence out of order makes it poetic.
SVO: I eat corn.
SOV: I, Corn, Eat.
VSO: Eat, I, Corn.
VOS: Eat, Corn, I
OSV: Corn, I eat.
OVS: Corn, Eat, I.
North Dakota fact:
The most common language in North Dakota is English, which uses a SVO word order.
The second most common is German, which also uses SVO.
And the third most common is Spanish, which is also SVO, but it's'd've kind of complicated.
I didn't know that
Thank you for that
English just has plain SVO
German has SVO but strictly has the Verb in the second position in a sentence so if you put an adverb in first position, your sentence instantly becomes VSO. (This is called V2 and English used to be this way as-well)
Spanish has SVO unless you have an object pronoun, then that sucker goes right before the conjugated verb, making the word order SOV in the sentence.
German doesn't actually have a SVO, but rather SOV (or at least, Standard German does. Don't know about the dialects)
See, German tricks you by looking like SVO in most sentences, but if you actually follow the verb phrase, NOT the conjugated verb, you'll notice quickly that it is always last, it just also has a V2 rule that puts the conjugated verb in the second position in all main sentences.
So for example, German for "I see the man" is "Ich sehe den Mann", but "I don't see the man" is "Ich sehe den Mann nicht", with the verbal adverb "nicht" (= not) being last. And the sentence "I have seen the man" is "Ich habe den Mann gesehen", and "I haven't seen the man" is "Ich habe den Mann nicht gesehen"
On top that, as soon as you move from main clauses to subordinate clauses, the V2 rule is no longer at play, and then you suddenly get a very clear cut SOV order. So "I think you haven't seen the man" is "Ich glaube, dass du den Mann nicht gesehen hast", with the subordinate verb "hast" clearly last.
So yeah, German is in fact a SOV language that is just cleverly disguising itself as a SVO with its V2 rule.
@@ThorirPP , putting a negator at the end doesn't change the location of the verb. The verb is still between the subject and the object. It may sometimes use SOV, but that doesn't mean it doesn't use SVO. It isn't disguising itself, it just uses different orders in different circumstances. English does this as well. It's oversimplifying to try and just assign one order to every language.
@@SgtSupaman I mean, that was kinda my point really. Describing a word order of a language using Subject, Verb, Object, is a simplification, and nuances gets lost, such as the true location of the verb phrase and what order the words are in more complex sentences.
If you use the normal method to find out the basic word order in German in normal declarative sentences, you'd get a SVO word order. But describing German as SVO gives a really misleading view on the actual syntactical structure of the language, which has a clear rule of putting the verb phrase itself last, with a special V2 rule moving the finite verb from the rest of the verb phrase to the second position in the sentence.
There are other complications with that break the word order, such as fronting/topicalization of objects, or the change of word order in questions, but V2 is the one that is active in the "basic word order", i.e. the normal basic declarative sentence, and such complicates matters for German. Which is why German is often NOT described as simply SVO by many linguists, but rather as SOV with V2 as a more accurate description.
edit: I really only wrote my first comment because I found it funny that the OP said that Spanish was SVO "but its kind of complicated" but said nothing about German. But mainly I just wanted to share this fun fact about German syntax, nothing more :D
When I was younger I really loved languages and created my own made-up language! I loved many word orders so I incorporated them all but for different types of sentences. So for example, SOV as the standard word order in affirmations or factual sentences, VSO for interrogations and SVO for exclamations.
Affirmations and factual sentences could also use the other 3 word orders not mentioned. Because it’s a highly inflectional language, it’s clear which one is the subject or object because of suffixes.
Reading a ton of dialogue in English-language fiction makes OSV word order seem kind of intuitive in a way. “Corn!” the capybara cried. As rare as that exact sentence might be to see in print, it’s even more rare to see dialogue tagged in reverse, maybe because the object is the most important thing in sentences like that.
Love your vids man, you helped me discover my passion for linguistics ❤
It's interesting to think that about my own mother tongue.
Word order is quite free in Estonian. Both SVO and OVS are possible. SVO is used more commonly while OVS is used mainly for situations where object is important (i.e corn specifically was eaten by Capibara) or when you want to add another sub-sentence that specifies the subject (i.e corn was eaten by a capibara who was green). Estonian sentences would be either SVO: "Kapibaara sõi maisi" or OVS: "Maisi sõi kabibaara". SOV, OSV and VSO are also possible, but they are rarer.
yeah i‘m pretty sure you can use all word orders freely in estonian, they just sound a bit funny but still make sense, like VOS, which you didnt mention (sõi maisi kapibaara) is still an ok sentance in the right context even if you dont see it used very much, word order puts no limitations on estonian
As someone bilingual in English and Dutch (learned as a child at the same time) I never much thought about it - just spoke. But then I translated a book from Dutch to English and noticed how just about every sentence required cutting it in half and switching the order...very interesting. I'm quite interested in the impact that native language word order has on culture, as language informs our lenses on the world.
Je realiseert je wel dat we de zelfde word order hebben?...
The capybara ate corn
De capybara at maïs
Voor zover ik weet wordt het Nederlands (en het Duits) als SOV-taal gezien, met een V2-regel. Dwz dat de persoonsvorm altijd op de tweede plaats in de zin moet staan. In simpele zinnen leidt dit tot een SVO-volgorde, maar in complexe zinnen zie je dat het werkwoord altijd na het leidend voorwerp komt. Vb: jij eet een appel = SVO, ik zie dat jij een appel gegeten hebt = de bijzin is SOV
germanic SVOV is so fascinating
Yep, V2. The normal word order is SOV, but you have some sort auxiliary, the participle goes after the object, so S‑V‑O‑V2
Ukrainian has pretty flexible word order, particularly in poetry. OSV is rare, but not unheard of. Eg “we have children” (literally “children are in our possession”) «У нас є діти» or “I have left my lover”, with an emphasis being put on “lover”: «кохану я покинув»
General Levantine Arabic sentences are either SVO or VSO, though technically all other forms can be used to put emphasis on a certain word, which is often the first spot in a sentence.
As other commenters have said for other Indoeuropean languages, in Italian too the most common SVO order can often give way to a different one, for example OVS, depending on emphasis.
For example:
- Who did this?
- I did it (in English, to emphasise that it was *I* who did it and not someone else, you'd stress the "I" and leave the V and O unstressed. In Italian instead you'd stress the same part of the sentence ("I", the subject) by moving it to the end of the sentence AND stressing it too: "L'ho fatto io", literally "It did I / OVS"
I always thought of Romance languages as being SOV because of the way direct objects are used. You say "Je t'aime," "Te amo," etc. not "Je aime te."
That is a question ffs. So many comments pulling out these obvious things.
The point of the video is general.
Your example would’ve worked did we asked questions as;
This did who?
…and…
This I did
Thank you for this video! 😀🌸
I find it weird how you didn’t mention that English is also able to do OSV, it’s the one that makes most sense with the rules of the language besides SVO. “Corn, the capybara ate” is a perfectly understandable basic sentence in English.
True but it does sound a bit poetic or dated
'Murder, she wrote'
"Corn, the capybara ate” is not a basic English sentence in the sense which applies to sentence word orders, because of the fronting of the object. The same applies to 'Murder, she wrote'.
@@razielthered Or like you're imitating Yoda.
Osv is fairly common in Spanish, for example the sentence A esta tienda nunca he ido (I've never gone to this store) is perfectly normal
I would usually say "nunca he ido a esta tienda" but sometimes I do use osv
In Russian the word order is rather flexible thanks to the system of cases. You always know whether a noun/pronoun is a subject or an object by its form alone. SVO and SOV are more common, in my opinion, but other types are also used.
Yeah, according to my one Russian 101 class it's still technically svo though.
@@sampagano205 это справедливо только для официального языка, например, нормативных актов и договоров.
Устный язык не имеет предпочтительных форм. Зависит от того, на чём говорящий делает акцент. Например,
Я хочу кофе - quiet.
Я кофе хочу - probably sombody offered tea
Хочу я кофе - I choose beverage
Хочу кофе я - I want coffee, me, not you
Кофе хочу я - somebody messed up, who wants or what I want
Кофе я хочу - I want coffee, it is the solution of my problem.
Это только варианты, кроме того интонации меняют смысл.
@@fostergrand4497в системах, описанных в видео нельзя использовать местоимения, так что "я хочу кофе" не лучший пример. Если поставить в твоём примере "человек" вместо "я" то получится уже другая ситуация
@@CrabO2 ровным счётом ничего не изменится.
Замените "я" на мартышку, а кофе на банан - все смыслы останутся, поменяется только лицо.
@@CrabO2 хотите просклоняю "студент едет в институт" на реальных предложениях?
Wonderful. I had to pause the video and go hop down a rabbit hole with "what language has free word order". I was expecting a fantasy language, like that of Rima the Bird Girl in the old book "Green Mansions", or maybe something like Klingon. I did NOT expect Persian, Russian, Polish, Czech, most of India, and more ... Thank you.
I started studying Korean last year and I was hoping you'd bring it up, fluid language structures are super neat
In Turkish; the element before the verb gets focused, thus the meaning differs for the same group of words as the word order shifts.
"Ali markete gitti." (Ali - the market - went; SOV) > emphasizes where did Ali go, answers the question "Where did Ali go?"
"Markete Ali gitti." (the market - Ali - went; OSV) > emphasizes who did go to the market, answers the question "Who did go to the market?"
"In Turkish; the element before the verb gets focused" Same in Hungarian.
Same in Russian. I would put first whatever information I'm trying to emphasize here be it Subject, Object or even Verb.
Congratulations on 1 million subscribers! You've earned every one of them!
Surprisingly all type of word orders are possible in some Indian languages but the most common word order is SOV as you said. For example, in Tamizh language (dravidian language spoken in southern part of India) shows all possible types of word order.
English - Animal ate food.
Tamil - விலங்கு உணவை உண்டது (Vilangu unavai undadhu) (SOV) (common order in all Indian languages)
Vilangu - animal, unavu - food, undadhu - ate
Other possible orders are,
விலங்கு உண்டது உணவை (vilangu undadhu unavai) (SVO)
உண்டது உணவை விலங்கு (undadhu unavai vilangu) (VOS)
உணவை உண்டது விலங்கு (unavai undadhu vilangu) (OVS).
And finally OSV order is also possible. Let's see 😉
உணவை விலங்கு உண்டது (unavai vilangu undadhu) (OSV)
And so. It is because of it's flexibility and agglutination. Very nice video. Greetings.
In Euskara the verb tends to go at the end (I think it never or barely ever goes at the beginning), but the order of the other elements depends.
If you want to stress sth other than the action, that'll be placed right before the verb.
Kapibarak=the capibara (as the subject of a transitive verb)
Artoa=the corn
Jan du=has eaten
So you can say:
-Kapibarak artoa jan du
(SOV. Standard order in Euskara, and according to the video, the most popular en general)
-Kapibarak jan du artoa
(you're stressing it's been the capibara and not sb else)
-Artoa jan du kapikarak (you're stressing it's corn what has been eaten)
-Artoa kapibarak jan du (OSV. You're stressing the corn but, most of all, the capibara. Not the action of eating - maybe bc we already knew it had happened, but now you're clarifying/stressing what has been eaten and who has done it)
I'm interested in how much morphology affects the prevalence of any word order. Like is there more variation within more synthetic languages, or are the two completely separate? I mean I know that Finnish mostly uses SVO, but since it's a pretty synthetic language, any word order is usually valid (albeit poetic at times) because(?) the morphemes indicate the role of each word in the sentence. But on the other hand, even with more analytic languages, you might be able to change the word order around as long as all the necessary bits (like prepositions) move with the "core" words.
I know English word order is as rigid as it is (not unchanging, but the changes are goverened by fairly strict rules) precisely because it used to have a lot of affixes indicating case and verb/subject agreement and such, then lost most of them and compensated for that by using the word order to impart that information instead.
it is sometimes acknowledged that it's not a sufficient explanation, but idk whether it's been studied deeply
I believe Icelandic and Bulgarian are examples of extensive case with rigid order and little case with flexible order
OSV I like. NativeLang I like. So OSV is Borat? And actually, thinking about this more, I realize now Bobby Lee's "Red beets, I like" may not be just a gag on the East Asian accent/immigrant English, but could be a direct translation of Korean OSV. So cool! Anyway, awesome video and so glad to see you keep chugging along!
cool is borat
@@thatgurkangurk But Cooler Yoda is
I admire your nerdy dedication to this subject and your passion for language.👍
Madly interesting...I wish you'd given many more examples though as you were rattling through the three-letter order!
This is such a cool video! I really felt seen when you described the teenager eagerly learning about as many languages as they could, that's basically my teen years in a nutshell haha
If I'm not mistaken Filipino can be VSO and VOS or SVO, the latter being uncommon and unnatural sounding order.
example:
1. Kumain(v) ang capybara(s) ng mais(o)
2. Kumain(v) ng mais(o) ang capybara(s)
3. Ang capybara(s) ay kumain(v) ng mais(o)
I'm no linguist so you may correct me😊
I’m studying Filipino, and I was thinking the same thing. VSO is the more common and natural way of speaking. But SVO is more formal (maybe more common in formal writing?)
Ang Mais(O) ay kinain(V) ng Capybara(S).
Ang Capybara(S) ay Mais(O) ang Kinain(V).
Ang Mais(O), ay Capybara(S)ang kumain(V)
@@romeocivilino6667it kinda makes sense when you hear or read it, but my experience says it's quite uncommon. But considering these as evidence plus due to the 1987 constitution article 14 section 6, Filipino is or may become a flexible language then, I guess?
Maybe I won't try to complicate this anymore but language can really just be complex, especially in our era where langguages tend to mix up due to globalization and influences in vocabulary and grammar may happen.
The SOV and OSV are the ones I actually think are uncommon by the way, where I mostly have read or heard in Filipino poetry.
@@ianvanancheta9005 It still part of the Filipino Language, whether it's for Formal or Informal usage, Spoken or Written form, or for Creating Literary, Lyrical or Scientific paperworks and/or any other purposes.
It's very common for me, maybe because I'm quite a reader, writer and literary composer myself.
I would recommend the work of Dave P Medeiros on this subject. He proposes an explanation for OSV rarity based on Knuth's stack-sorting algorithm. Truly fascinating.
Its great that i found this video. I thought about word order a while ago and assumed that the difference between subject and object is just that by definition the subject is the one that comes first.
Its not quite right but the idea explains why subject is usually before object
And especially osv is least often because it splits of v and o which form the verb phrase
I speak Tagalog/Filipino and this made me thinking. You can make a Tagalog sentence with any word order!
VOS: Kumain ng saging si Maria.
OSV: Saging, si Maria kumain.*
SVO: Si Maria ay kumain ng saging.
VSO: Kumain si Maria ng saging.
OVS: Saging ang kinain ni Maria.
SOV: Si Maria, saging ang kinain.*
All of these mean "Maria ate banana".
*: These are more poetic and literary.
all of these are excellent examples but I think a more natural OSV example goes something like:
Yung ulam si Maria nagluto (The food, Maria is the one that cooked it)
I didn't have time to pursue linguistics while at college. But, I feel I'm in a Bachelor's degree program after understanding your videos and reading through all of the source materials. Thank you for all your hard work and the excellent graphics and music used to explain these subjects. Congrats again on 1 Million subscribers!
Wonder if so called liNguIsT actually speak the language their simping with 🤣So weird studying other languages without knowing what it meant
Hello Josh. I just wanted to suggest a theme for a video, about my language, Asturian or Asturleonese, there aren't a lot of native speakers left, it's the only romance language with neuter gender. You could also talk about the Vaqueiros, their old lifestyle that dates back to pre-roman celtic tribes, their very unique dialect with a weird phoneme in that area, and the very unknown genocide attempt against them.
thats sad knowing what you guys have cotributed to the existince of spain because you guys literally created spain and portugal you guys started the reconquista
@@Lamajmassar Yeah, we basically started the Reconquista only to be ignored today by Spain. :/
@@fueyo2229 spain is too united asturian revolution may come
@@Lamajmassar We don't want a revolution, or an uprising or anything really, we are Spanish but we want our language to have the same rights as Spanish or other languages like Galician or Basque.
@@fueyo2229 revolt will do the thing
You have such a nice calm voice that I nearly fell asleep listening.
One thing I find inaccurate: In Finnish SVO is much more common than SOV, although people would understand that too.
Ok, sometimes OVS can be used, for highlighting a situation. And maybe other orders as well, depending on the matter. The Finnish word ordering is somewhat flexsible. To a point, which the immigrants try to stretch to infinity *sigh*.
I would say korean, although the most "standard" way of structuring a sentence is SOV, has subject and object markers so we can freely move around the words without altering the general meaning
I liked how you mentioned there are sometimes "fixed" parts like with the subject, for example, but the object and verb can go anywhere else in the sentence. Ojibwe, an Algonquin language in North America, does this too, except subject and verb are ALWAYS fixed together
In Spanish, Joda also uses VOS, I tried making a sentence like the ones he would say and it just clicked! Thanks you very much for this video, i don't know anything about grammar and this video really helped me on learning greek
It's Yoda! Joda is a dirty name!