Editing Subject–verb–object word order (section)

== Properties ==
Subject–verb–object languages almost always place [[relative clause]]s after the nouns which they modify and [[adverbial subordinator]]s before the clause modified, with [[varieties of Chinese]] being notable exceptions.

Although some subject–verb–object languages in [[West Africa]], the best known being [[Ewe language|Ewe]], use [[postposition]]s in noun phrases, the vast majority of them, such as English, have [[preposition]]s. Most subject–verb–object languages place genitives after the noun, but a significant minority, including the postpositional SVO languages of West Africa, the [[Hmong–Mien languages]], some [[Sino-Tibetan languages]], and European languages like Swedish, Danish, Lithuanian and Latvian have ''prenominal'' genitives<ref>{{cite web |url=http://wals.info/feature/description/86 |title=Order of Genitive and Noun}}</ref> (as would be expected in an [[Subject–object–verb|SOV language]]).

Non-European SVO languages usually have a strong tendency to place [[adjective]]s, [[demonstrative]]s and [[numeral (linguistics)|numerals]] after the nouns that they modify, but Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian and Indonesian place numerals before nouns, as in English. Some linguists have come to view the numeral as the head in the relationship to fit the rigid right-branching of these languages.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Donohue |first=Mark |title=Word order in Austronesian from north to south and west to east |journal=Linguistic Typology |volume=11 |date=2007 |issue=2 |page=379|doi=10.1515/LINGTY.2007.026 |s2cid=49214413 |via=Austronesian linguistics - ANU |s2cid-access=free |url=http://austronesian.linguistics.anu.edu.au/historydownloads/Donohue_2007_AN%20word%20order.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190328172606/http://austronesian.linguistics.anu.edu.au/historydownloads/Donohue_2007_AN%20word%20order.pdf |archive-date= Mar 28, 2019 }}</ref>

There is a strong tendency, as in English, for main verbs to be preceded by auxiliaries: ''I '''am''' thinking. He '''should''' reconsider.''