Object–verb word order

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.

They are primarily left-branching, or head-final, with heads often found at the end of their phrases, with a resulting tendency to have the adjectives before nouns, to place adpositions after the noun phrases they govern (in other words, to use postpositions), to put relative clauses before their referents, and to place auxiliary verbs after the action verb. Of the OV languages that make use of affixes, many predominantly, or even exclusively, as in the case of Turkish, prefer suffixation to prefixation.

For example, English would be considered a VO language, and Japanese and Korean would be considered to be OV.

Japanese:

犬

inu

 

が

ga

 

猫

neko

object

を

o

 

追いかけた

oikaketa

verb

犬 が 猫 を 追いかけた

inu ga neko o oikaketa

{} {} object {} verb

The dog chased (verb) the cat (object)

Korean:

개는

gae-neun

 

고양이를

go-yang-i-reul

object

쫓았다

jjo-chatt-da

verb

개는 고양이를 쫓았다

gae-neun go-yang-i-reul jjo-chatt-da

{} object verb

The dog chased (verb) the cat (object)

Turkish:

Köpek,

 

kediyi

object

kovaladı.

verb

Köpek, kediyi kovaladı.

{} object verb

The dog chased (verb) the cat (object)

Some languages, such as Finnish, Hungarian, Russian, and Yiddish, use both OV and VO constructions, 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