Editing Linguistic typology (section)

===== 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"/>