Object Verb Subject
Encyclopedia
In linguistic typology
, Object–verb–subject (OVS) or object–verb–agent (OVA) is a rare permutation of word order
. OVS denotes the sequence object
–verb
–subject
in unmarked expressions: Oranges ate Sam, Thorns have roses. While the passive voice
in English may appear to be in the OVS order, this is not an accurate description. In an active voice sentence, for example Sam ate the oranges, the grammatical subject, Sam is the 'agent
', who is acting on the 'patient
,' the oranges, which are the object of the verb ate. In the passive voice, The oranges were eaten by Sam, the order is reversed so that patient is followed by verb, followed by agent. However, the oranges become the subject of the verb were eaten which is modified by the prepositional phrase by Sam which expresses the agent, maintaining the usual subject–verb–(object) order. OVS sentences in English can be parsed when pronouns mark the case (Him like I.) But such a sentence is nonstandard. This sort of reversed order can also be used in English when relating an adjective to a noun (i.e. "cold is Alaska"), although here cold is a predicative adjective, not an object. A rare example of a valid, if idiomatic, English use of this typology is the poetic hyperbaton
'Answer gave he none.'
of these constituents
. In this case the sequence of the constituents is object–verb–subject. This sequence is the rarest of the six possible orderings of subject, verb, and object. Examples of human languages that use it include Tamil
particularly in reported speech and passive voice. The above example Orange-kalai (Accusative object) sapittavan (past tense verb with first person singular conjugation) Sam (Subject) is grammatically correct in Tamil, Guarijio
, Hixkaryana
, Urarina
and to some extent also Tapirapé.
, Romanian
,Croatian
,Basque
, Esperanto, Hungarian
, Finnish
, Russian
and, to some extent, German
and Dutch
, are examples. Some languages, such as Swedish
and Norwegian
, which normally lack any extensive case marking, allow such structures when pronoun
s (which are marked for case) are involved, or when the roles are clear from context. In these languages it is fairly often used when the object is already marked as the topic of a discourse and new information is added about the object. OVS is also frequent when there has been a discussion or question about the nature or identity of the object and that question is answered.
Some Norwegian examples of using this word order for object emphasis: Det tror jeg ikke (That believe I not) – I do not believe THAT. Tom så jeg i går (Tom saw I yesterday) – I saw TOM yesterday. Fisk liker katten (fish likes the cat) – The cat likes FISH. In the last example it is highly unlikely that "fish" is the subject, and hence that word order can be used.
In some languages, auxiliary rules of word order can provide enough disambiguation for an emphatic use of OVS. For example, declarative statements in Danish
are ordinarily SVnO, where "n" is the position of negating or modal adverbs. However, OVSn can be used to emphasize the object when there is no ambiguity. Thus, "Susanne elsker ikke Omar" (lit. Susanne loves not Omar: Susanne does not love Omar) versus "Omar elsker Susanne ikke" (lit. Omar loves Susanne not: Omar is someone whom Susanne doesn't love) where neither "Omar" nor "Susanne" have case.
The flexibility of word order in Russian also allows for OVS sentences, generally to emphasize the subject. For example: "Я закончил задание" (lit. I finished task/mission: I finished the task/mission) versus "Задание закончил я" (lit. Task/mission finished I: It was I who finished the task/mission).
, although the Interlingua Grammar
makes no mention of it excepting passive voice. Thomas Breinstrup, editor in chief of Panorama in Interlingua
, sometimes uses the sequence in articles written for Panorama.
This sequence was chosen for the artificial language Klingon
, a language spoken by the extraterrestrial
Klingon race
in the fictional universe of the Star Trek
series, in order to make the language sound deliberately alien and counterintuitive. Thus, Klingon uses the rarest permutation of expression, which is expected given the designer's goals.
Linguistic typology
Linguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages...
, Object–verb–subject (OVS) or object–verb–agent (OVA) is a rare permutation of word order
Word order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
. OVS denotes the sequence object
Object (grammar)
An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...
–verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
–subject
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
in unmarked expressions: Oranges ate Sam, Thorns have roses. While the passive voice
Passive voice
Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...
in English may appear to be in the OVS order, this is not an accurate description. In an active voice sentence, for example Sam ate the oranges, the grammatical subject, Sam is the 'agent
Agent (grammar)
In linguistics, a grammatical agent is the cause or initiator of an event. Agent is the name of the thematic role...
', who is acting on the 'patient
Patient (grammar)
In linguistics, a grammatical patient, also called the target or undergoer, is the participant of a situation upon whom an action is carried out. A patient as differentiated from a theme must undergo a change in state. A theme is denoted by a stative verb, where a patient is denoted by a dynamic...
,' the oranges, which are the object of the verb ate. In the passive voice, The oranges were eaten by Sam, the order is reversed so that patient is followed by verb, followed by agent. However, the oranges become the subject of the verb were eaten which is modified by the prepositional phrase by Sam which expresses the agent, maintaining the usual subject–verb–(object) order. OVS sentences in English can be parsed when pronouns mark the case (Him like I.) But such a sentence is nonstandard. This sort of reversed order can also be used in English when relating an adjective to a noun (i.e. "cold is Alaska"), although here cold is a predicative adjective, not an object. A rare example of a valid, if idiomatic, English use of this typology is the poetic hyperbaton
Hyperbaton
Hyperbaton is a figure of speech in which words that naturally belong together are separated from each other for emphasis or effect. This kind of unnatural or rhetorical separation is possible to a much greater degree in highly inflected languages, where sentence meaning does not depend closely...
'Answer gave he none.'
Classification
OVS is a class of languages used in the classification of languages according to the dominant sequenceWord order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
of these constituents
Constituent (linguistics)
In syntactic analysis, a constituent is a word or a group of words that functions as a single unit within a hierarchical structure. The analysis of constituent structure is associated mainly with phrase structure grammars, although dependency grammars also allow sentence structure to be broken down...
. In this case the sequence of the constituents is object–verb–subject. This sequence is the rarest of the six possible orderings of subject, verb, and object. Examples of human languages that use it include Tamil
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
particularly in reported speech and passive voice. The above example Orange-kalai (Accusative object) sapittavan (past tense verb with first person singular conjugation) Sam (Subject) is grammatically correct in Tamil, Guarijio
Guarijio language
Huarijio is an Uto-Aztecan language of the states of Chihuahua and Sonora in northwestern Mexico...
, Hixkaryana
Hixkaryana language
Hixkaryana is one of the Carib languages, spoken by just over 500 people on the Nhamundá River, a tributary of the Amazon River in Brazil. It is one of a few known natural languages that normally use object–verb–subject word order, and may have been the first such language to be described...
, Urarina
Urarina
The Urarina are an indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon Basin who inhabit the Chambira, Urituyacu, and Corrientes Rivers. According to both archaeological and historical sources, they have resided in the Chambira Basin of contemporary northeastern Peru for centuries. The Urarina refer to...
and to some extent also Tapirapé.
Syntax sequence uses
Although not dominant, this sequence is also possible when the object is stressed in languages that have relatively free word order due to case marking. ArabicArabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
,Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
,Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
, Esperanto, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and, to some extent, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, are examples. Some languages, such as Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
and Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, which normally lack any extensive case marking, allow such structures when pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s (which are marked for case) are involved, or when the roles are clear from context. In these languages it is fairly often used when the object is already marked as the topic of a discourse and new information is added about the object. OVS is also frequent when there has been a discussion or question about the nature or identity of the object and that question is answered.
Some Norwegian examples of using this word order for object emphasis: Det tror jeg ikke (That believe I not) – I do not believe THAT. Tom så jeg i går (Tom saw I yesterday) – I saw TOM yesterday. Fisk liker katten (fish likes the cat) – The cat likes FISH. In the last example it is highly unlikely that "fish" is the subject, and hence that word order can be used.
In some languages, auxiliary rules of word order can provide enough disambiguation for an emphatic use of OVS. For example, declarative statements in Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
are ordinarily SVnO, where "n" is the position of negating or modal adverbs. However, OVSn can be used to emphasize the object when there is no ambiguity. Thus, "Susanne elsker ikke Omar" (lit. Susanne loves not Omar: Susanne does not love Omar) versus "Omar elsker Susanne ikke" (lit. Omar loves Susanne not: Omar is someone whom Susanne doesn't love) where neither "Omar" nor "Susanne" have case.
The flexibility of word order in Russian also allows for OVS sentences, generally to emphasize the subject. For example: "Я закончил задание" (lit. I finished task/mission: I finished the task/mission) versus "Задание закончил я" (lit. Task/mission finished I: It was I who finished the task/mission).
In constructed languages
The object–verb–subject sequence also occurs in InterlinguaInterlingua
Interlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...
, although the Interlingua Grammar
Interlingua: A Grammar of the International Language
Interlingua: A Grammar of the International Language, sometimes called the Interlingua Grammar, is the first grammar of Interlingua. Released in 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association , it remains an authoritative reference work for Interlingua speakers and students of...
makes no mention of it excepting passive voice. Thomas Breinstrup, editor in chief of Panorama in Interlingua
Panorama in Interlingua
Panorama in Interlingua is the primary periodical for the language Interlingua, published bimonthly. It was first issued in January 1988. The magazine is written completely in Interlingua and the activities of the Union Mundial pro Interlingua appear in each issue, but the content is not...
, sometimes uses the sequence in articles written for Panorama.
This sequence was chosen for the artificial language Klingon
Klingon language
The Klingon language is the constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe....
, a language spoken by the extraterrestrial
Extraterrestrial life in popular culture
In popular cultures, "extraterrestrials" are life forms — especially intelligent life forms— that are of extraterrestrial origin .-Historical ideas:-Pre-modern:...
Klingon race
Klingon
Klingons are a fictional warrior race in the Star Trek universe.Klingons are recurring villains in the 1960s television show Star Trek: The Original Series, and have appeared in all five spin-off series and eight feature films...
in the fictional universe of the Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
series, in order to make the language sound deliberately alien and counterintuitive. Thus, Klingon uses the rarest permutation of expression, which is expected given the designer's goals.
See also
- Subject–object–verb
- Subject–verb–object
- Object–subject–verb
- Verb–object–subject
- Verb–subject–object