Editing Linguistic typology (section)

==== Dominant order ====
One set of types reflects the basic order of [[subject (grammar)|subject]], [[verb]], and [[direct object]] in sentences:

* [[Object–subject–verb]] (OSV)
* [[Object–verb–subject]] (OVS)
* [[Subject–verb–object]] (SVO)
* [[Subject–object–verb]] (SOV)
* [[Verb–subject–object]] (VSO)
* [[Verb–object–subject]] (VOS)

These labels usually appear abbreviated as "SVO" and so forth, and may be called "typologies" of the languages to which they apply. The most commonly attested word orders are SOV and SVO while the least common orders are those that are object initial with OVS being the least common with only four attested instances.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Gell-Mann |first1=Murray |last2=Ruhlen |first2=Merritt |date=2011-10-18 |title=The origin and evolution of word order |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |volume=108 |issue=42 |pages=17290–17295 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1113716108 |issn=0027-8424 |pmc=3198322 |pmid=21987807|bibcode=2011PNAS..10817290G |doi-access=free }}</ref>

In the 1980s, linguists began to question the relevance of geographical distribution of different values for various features of linguistic structure. They may have wanted to discover whether a particular grammatical structure found in one language is likewise found in another language in the same geographic location.<ref>Comrie, Bernard, et al. “Chapter Introduction.” WALS Online - Chapter Introduction, The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, 2013.</ref> Some languages split verbs into an auxiliary and an infinitive or participle and put the subject and/or object between them. For instance, German ({{lang|de|Ich '''habe''' einen Fuchs im Wald '''gesehen'''}} - *"I have a fox in-the woods seen"), Dutch ({{lang|nl|Hans '''vermoedde''' dat Jan Marie '''zag leren zwemmen'''}} - *"Hans suspected that Jan Marie saw to learn to swim") and Welsh ({{lang|cy|'''Mae'''<nowiki>'</nowiki>r gwirio sillafu wedi'i '''gwblhau'''}} - *"Is the checking spelling after its to complete"). In this case, linguists base the typology on the non-analytic tenses (i.e. those sentences in which the verb is not split) or on the position of the auxiliary. German is thus SVO in main clauses and Welsh is VSO (and preposition phrases would go after the infinitive).

Many typologists{{Who|date=March 2017}} classify both German and Dutch as [[V2 word order|V2]] languages, as the verb invariantly occurs as the second element of a full clause.

Some languages allow varying degrees of freedom in their constituent order, posing a problem for their classification within the subject–verb–object schema. Languages with bound case markings for nouns, for example, tend to have more flexible word orders than languages where case is defined by position within a sentence or presence of a preposition. For example, in some languages with bound case markings for nouns, such as Language X, varying degrees of freedom in constituent order are observed. These languages exhibit more flexible word orders, allowing for variations like Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) structure, as in 'The cat ate the mouse,' and Object-Subject-Verb (OSV) structure, as in 'The mouse the cat ate.' To define a basic constituent order type in this case, one generally looks at frequency of different types in declarative affirmative main clauses in pragmatically neutral contexts, preferably with only old referents. Thus, for instance, Russian is widely considered an SVO language, as this is the most frequent constituent order under such conditions—all sorts of variations are possible, though, and occur in texts. In many inflected languages, such as Russian, Latin, and Greek, departures from the default word-orders are permissible but usually imply a shift in focus, an emphasis on the final element, or some special context. In the poetry of these languages, the word order may also shift freely to meet metrical demands. Additionally, freedom of word order may vary within the same language—for example, formal, literary, or archaizing varieties may have different, stricter, or more lenient constituent-order structures than an informal spoken variety of the same language.

On the other hand, when there is no clear preference under the described conditions, the language is considered to have "flexible constituent order" (a type unto itself).

An additional problem is that in languages without living speech communities, such as [[Latin]], [[Ancient Greek]], and [[Old Church Slavonic]], linguists have only written evidence, perhaps written in a poetic, formalizing, or archaic style that mischaracterizes the actual daily use of the language.<ref>[http://jhsonline.org/Articles/article_61.pdf] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210211053203/http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_61.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150318015947/http://jhsonline.org/Articles/article_61.pdf|archive-date=2015-03-18|url-status=live|date=February 11, 2021}} Issues in the Linguistic Analysis of a Dead Language, with Particular Reference to Ancient Hebrew, Holmstead, R 2006</ref> The daily spoken language of [[Sophocles]] or [[Cicero]] might have exhibited a different or much more regular syntax than their written legacy indicates.

===== Theoretical issues =====
The below table indicates the distribution of the dominant word order pattern of over 5,000 individual languages and 366 language families. SOV is the most common type in both although much more clearly in the data of language families including [[Language isolate|isolates]]. 'NODOM' represents languages without a single dominant order.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hammarström |first=Harald  |year=2016 |title=Linguistic diversity and language evolution|journal=Journal of Language Evolution |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=19–29 |doi=10.1093/jole/lzw002 | url=https://academic.oup.com/jole/article/1/1/19/2281898 | access-date=2022-05-19|doi-access=free |hdl=11858/00-001M-0000-0029-2F3E-C |hdl-access=free }}</ref>

{| class="wikitable"
!Type !! Languages !!% !! Families !!%
|-
| SOV || 2,275|| 43.3% || 239 || 65.3% 
|-
| SVO || 2,117|| 40.3% || 55 ||  15%
|-
| VSO || 503|| 9.5% || 27 || 7.4% 
|-
| VOS || 174|| 3.3% || 15|| 4.1% 
|-
| NODOM || 124|| 2.3% || 26 || 7.1%
|-
| OVS || 40|| 0.7% || 3 || 0.8%
|-
| OSV || 19|| 0.3% || 1 || 0.3% 
|}

Though the reason of dominance is sometimes considered an unsolved or unsolvable typological problem, several explanations for the distribution pattern have been proposed. Evolutionary explanations include those by [[Thomas Givon]] (1979), who suggests that all languages stem from an SOV language but are evolving into different kinds; and by [[Derek Bickerton]] (1981), who argues that the original language was SVO, which supports simpler grammar employing word order instead of case markers to differentiate between clausal roles.<ref name="Song Order">{{Cite book |last=Song |first=Jae Jung |title=Word Order |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2012 |isbn=9781139033930}}</ref>

Universalist explanations include a model by Russell Tomlin (1986) based on three functional principles: (i) animate before inanimate; (ii) theme before comment; and (iii) verb-object bonding. The three-way model roughly predicts the real hierarchy (see table above) assuming no statistical difference between SOV and SVO, and, also, no statistical difference between VOS and OVS. By contrast, the processing efficiency theory of [[John A. Hawkins (linguist)|John A. Hawkins]] (1994) suggests that constituents are ordered from shortest to longest in VO languages, and from longest to shortest in OV languages, giving rise to the attested distribution. This approach relies on the notion that OV languages have heavy subjects, and VO languages have heavy objects, which is disputed.<ref name="Song Order"/>