Object–verb word order
| Linguistic typology |
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| Morphological |
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| Morphosyntactic |
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| Word order |
| Lexicon |
In linguistics, an OV language (object–verb language), or a language with object-verb word order, is a language in which the object comes before the verb. OV languages compose approximately forty-seven percent of documented languages.[1] [2]
They are primarily left-
prefixation
.
For example,
would be considered to be OV.Japanese:
犬
inu
が
ga
猫
neko
object
を
o
追いかけた
oikaketa
verb
The dog chased (verb) the cat (object)
Korean:
개는
gae-neun
고양이를
go-yang-i-reul
object
쫓았다
jjo-chatt-da
verb
The dog chased (verb) the cat (object)
Turkish:
Köpek,
kediyi
object
kovaladı.
verb
The dog chased (verb) the cat (object)
Some languages, such as
Yiddish, use both OV and VO constructions,[4] but in other instances, such as Early Middle English, some dialects may use VO and others OV. Languages that contain both OV and VO construction may solidify into one or the other construction. A language that moves the verb or verb phrase
more than the object will have surface VO word order, and a language which moves the object more than the verb or verb phrase will have surface OV word order.
Subsets
- Subject–object–verb
- Object–subject–verb
- Object–verb–subject
References
- JSTOR 414811.
- ^ Dryer, Matthew S. (2013). "Order of Object and Verb". In Dryer, Matthew S.; Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). World Atlas of Language Structures. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Retrieved 31 May 2015.
- ISBN 90-272-2781-0.
- ISBN 9789027299208.