Friday, January 8, 2010

Do most languages in the world use a structure of subject, object, and then verb?

in KoreanDo most languages in the world use a structure of subject, object, and then verb?
Yes, subject, object, verb [SOV] is the most common. English and the Romance languages are SVO, although most have special cases where other orders are understood (especially in questions or certain tenses).





For example, in English we can say ';With whom did you speak?'; [OSV] or things called locative inversions, where [(O)VS] occurs ';In the garden sat a cat';.





On this also depends the presence or absence of a declension system (synthetic). English has mostly lost its declension although bits remain (whom vs. who, him vs. he). This makes for a generally more rigid word order. Languages like Latin have very strong declension systems. Also, Slavic languages like Polish and Russian retain the system. For example: Latin ';Meam matrem amo ego'; (lit.: My mother love I), ';Amo meam matrem ego'; (lit. Love my mother I), ';Ego amo meam matrem'; (lit: I love my mother), and ';Meam matrem amo (ego)'; (lit. My mother love (I) [the I could and mostly was left out because of the conjugation system of verbs]) are all perfectly understandable, with the last being the most common.





Sorry for writing so much! I just love topics like this so much, so I get carried away. You can e-mail me with ANY questions! I love this grammo-linguistic stuff so much!!!Do most languages in the world use a structure of subject, object, and then verb?
No, the subject/verb/object structure we use in English is the most common.

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