# Strictness of word order



## Gavril

In keeping with the other discussion on word order, I wanted to ask the following: are there any languages that show a strict preference for VSO, VOS or another word order besides SVO/SOV? By "strict", I mean something like the strictness with which standard English holds to SVO.


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## HBZ55

Modern Standard Arabic has a preference for VSO, but I don't think I can compare strictness what what you mentioned.


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## berndf

Same is true for biblical Hebrew. Interestingly, Akkadian had SOV order.


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## Epilio

Some of Polynesian languages as Maori or Tongan have a marked VSO order, quite strict apparently. 



HBZ55 said:


> Modern Standard Arabic has a preference for VSO, but I don't think I can compare strictness what what you mentioned.



What about Darija?. Do they have another kind of word order?.


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## effeundici

Italian is quite strange with respect to that, I think.

Firstly, the subject is implied most of the times, being it embedded in the verb.

The subject is mentioned explicitly only if the speaker wants to focus on it.

Example:

Vado via ==> I'm leaving
Io vado via ==> I'm leaving.... (you can do whatever you want)

With respect to the order ,it depends on what the speaker wants to focus on.


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## Frank78

German has:

S-     V- indirect object - direct object (standard word order)
S    - V- dO- inO
dO - V - S - inO
inO - V - S - dO

You see, the only rule is that the verb takes second position. If you do NOT use the standard word order the focus of the sentence changes. Usually to the thing mentioned at the beginning of the sentence.


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## HBZ55

@Epilio:
I guess in Darija it has a preference for SVO, but VSO is still used sometimes. At least that's in my dialect, I'm not sure about the others. But it's the other way around in MSA, VSO is mainly used, but SVO can be used on some occasions to add emphasis on the person who's doing the action.


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## sokol

I take it with "strictness" you mean a strict word order which you *have *to follow else meaning changes or the sentence becomes nonsensical (like in English) compared to languages where this is not the case, like in German or, even more so of course, some dead languages like Latin.

I think Austronesian languages should be rather strict in this respect: lack of inflectional morphology always makes syntax more important - only word order will give words their correct grammatical value; but I hardly know anything about those.

In European languages anyway it is clear that those which have lost much inflectional morphology do apply (need to apply) stricter word order.


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## palomnik

Irish is pretty strictly VSO.

While I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a VOS language, I have never encountered one.


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## Gavril

palomnik said:


> Irish is pretty strictly VSO.
> 
> While I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a VOS language, I have never encountered one.



Are you talking about Modern Irish? In Old Irish, if I recall correctly, word order could sometimes be changed for emphasis, which it essentially never can in (standard) English.


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## palomnik

Gavril said:


> Are you talking about Modern Irish? In Old Irish, if I recall correctly, word order could sometimes be changed for emphasis, which it essentially never can in (standard) English.



I know it is the standard pattern in modern Irish.  I was under the impression that it was also true of Old Irish as well.  

In any case, most languages do seem to allow for a departure from the "standard" construction, usually for emphasis.  German, for example, is normally SVO in non-dependent clauses, but the only real hard fast rule is that the verb (or the auxiliary verb, in compound tenses) has to be the second element in the sentence.  Spanish allows for inversion of the subject to the end of the sentence for emphasis.  Even English allows for some inversion, although generally only in poetic speech and even that is archaic.


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## berndf

palomnik said:


> but the only real hard fast rule is that the verb (or the auxiliary verb, in compound tenses) has to be the second element in the sentence.


Not even this is really "hard". But OSV or SOV in main clauses sound archaic or poetic in Modern German:
_Meiner Braut einen Ring ich gab._ (Indirect object, direct object, subject, verb).


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## entangledbank

Gavril said:


> word order could sometimes be changed for emphasis, which it essentially never can in (standard) English.


 
Now that I can't agree with. Normal objects are post-verbal but emphasized or contrasted objects we put at the front. This construction linguists sometimes call topicalization.


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## Gavril

entangledbank said:


> Now that I can't agree with. Normal objects are post-verbal but emphasized or contrasted objects we put at the front. This construction linguists sometimes call topicalization.



Fronting may be more common than I was implying in the previous post, but it isn't nearly common enough (again, in standard English) to say that "emphasized or contrasted objects we put at the front". For example, I wouldn't expect to hear the following often, if ever:

_Yesterday, I took the train to work. The bus I took today.

_I would add that at least one of your sentences above -- _This construction linguists sometimes call topicalization_ -- sounds highly non-standard to me.


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## entangledbank

My paragraph was of course contrived, but each of the sentences individually is normal English. The thing is, it's more spoken English, since it tends to depend on intonation more than writing can cope with. That said, left and right dislocation are also colloquial, though I wouldn't say they were as common as fronting. My ultimate point was, I would never have thought of English as a language with rigid word order.


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## origumi

Master Yoda's OSV for example if we take, very funny his language sounds yet understandable it is. May we therefore learn not too rigid English to be.


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## Gavril

entangledbank said:


> My paragraph was of course contrived, but each of the sentences individually is normal English.



The first two sentences may be normal, but I'm not sure about the third. If the sentence _This construction linguists sometimes call topicalization_ implies a contrast between _this construction _and something else, then I don't see it being contrasted with anything in the context of the post.



> The thing is, it's more spoken English, since it tends to depend on intonation more than writing can cope with. That said, left and right dislocation are also colloquial, though I wouldn't say they were as common as fronting.


Are there any studies on this, out of curiosity?


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## Gavril

origumi said:


> Master Yoda's OSV for example if we take, very funny his language sounds yet understandable it is. May we therefore learn not too rigid English to be.



Rigid word order doesn't imply that sentences with nonstandard word order are incomprehensible: rather, it implies that such sentences are absent, or nearly absent, from actual speech and writing (except when one is trying to sound funny or otherwise strange).


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## Mahaodeh

HBZ55 said:


> Modern Standard Arabic has a preference for VSO, but I don't think I can compare strictness what what you mentioned.


 
While VSO is the normative way, I wouldn't call it strict at all. Colloquial Arabic is generally stricter because a lot of dialects have dropped the infliction so there may be some confusion between subject and object but not in standard Arabic.


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## Razin'

Epilio said:


> What about Darija? Do they have another kind of word order?.


 
I think it's safe to say that most Arabic dialects prefer SVO order rather than VSO.


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## Stoggler

palomnik said:


> Irish is pretty strictly VSO.


 
The same with Welsh, and the other Celtic languages.  However, words can be brought to the beginning of the sentence for stress.

VOS - Fijian and Malagasy (spoken on Madagascar)
OVS - Hixkaryana, a Carib language spoken in Brazil
OSV - Xavante, spoken in Brazil (and has an odd phonology!); and Warao spoken in Venezuela.

SVO and SOV are the most common word orders in natural languages, with SOV being the most common.


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