Template talk:Language word order frequency

This template needs to be updated. Please help update this template to reflect recent events or newly available information. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. (October 2012)

A third of the example languages were wrong according to the sources I have on them, so I removed them from the template, and reassigned Tamil. — kwami (talk) 03:44, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest removing Hebrew. The order of the biblical Hebrew is not the same as contemporary Hebrew.^[1] --Guillcote (talk) 20:35, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest inclusion of Klingon (OVS) and Yoda Speak (OSV). Perhaps the languages created by Tolkien and for Game of Thrones also (Dothraki is SVO). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:6417:7D00:A11F:3F8F:4848:4138 (talk) 13:49, 10 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

 Disagree – Conlangs do not offer any insight into the distribution of different word-orders among languages around the world. Yoda Speak is not a language, not even a conlang - it is English spoken with an unusual word order and should definitely not be included. – Dyolf87 (talk) 14:20, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ancient Greek should be removed from the template as it is no longer a spoken language, only a language found in writings of antiquity. It is therefore not counted in the amongst the languages among which the SOV word order is spread. – Dyolf87 (talk) 14:16, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

in west Indian dialect, it is evident that the structure of "HIM SHE LOVES" exists eg    IS HIM SHE LOVE--- eg A HIM SHE LOVE     (POSTING AS A GUEST)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.29.134.176 (talk) 04:36, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply] 

Hello world or universe. 116.66.195.190 (talk) 04:16, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"float:right" on such a big table makes for painfully cramped layouts. Is there an alternate version without it? —Tamfang (talk) 23:10, 22 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I see there has been some confusion about the example 'She loves him', because the translation in French, Russian,... is not representative of the default word order. I think it would be a good idea to use a sentence without pronouns because not only the object can be in a non-default position as pronoun ('je t'aime'), but also the subject.

An example appears to be the Mizo language, which is an SOV language according to Chhangte (1989) (http://sealang.net/sala/archives/pdf8/chhangte1989grammar.pdf), but when the subject is 'I' (and I suppose this is valid for other pronouns too), it is placed before the verb. So we have (translated) 'the child (S) a rat (O) caught (V)', but 'your father I know'. Apparently this led someone to conclude that Mizo is an OSV language (see the talk page there).

I think I found another example in the Tobati language (which I added as OSV). My source is a chapter from 'The Oceanic Languages' (see https://archive.org/details/crowley-.-the-oceanic-languages/page/185/mode/2up?). A clear example of OSV is Hony-o for-o rom-i. (dog-FV pig-FV see-3SG), which translates as 'The pig saw the dog.' But Donohue adds (p.199): "When verbal indexing makes the reference of the core arguments unambiguous, then this [OSV] order is relaxed." With the example: Nehu man ros(-ad) j-om-ric. (1SG bird two-ALL 1SG-see-3PL) 'I saw two birds.' (SOV)

My proposal for a better example sentence would be: "Tim eats fruit." Other proposals?

(added: I think the only advantage of using 'She loves him' is that 'she' is morphologically always subject, and 'him' always object; so a sentence is needed where it's semantically obvious what the subject is) Exarchus (talk) 16:56, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My proposal is: "The child eats fruits". Using present tense disambiguates the number of the subject in English. S and O must have different number so it remains clear which NP is S. –Austronesier (talk) 22:42, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's an idea. But then I have another proposal: "Cows eat grass." (because I think 'eats fruits' sounds a bit contrived in English) The sentence should also be as short as possible to reduce the width of the table, which is why I initially chose 'Tim' Exarchus (talk) 09:14, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Cows eat grass – grass eat cows – eat cows grass – eat grass cows – cows grass eat – grass cows eat. Looks good! –Austronesier (talk) 14:23, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It is a fraction wider than 'She loves him', so the table could become a bit longer.

I think I'll change the sentence tomorrow if no one has protested by then. Exarchus (talk) 16:53, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hungarian is given as SOV here, but I regularly see it mentioned as an SVO language, like on the Hungarian grammar page. Then there's the World Atlas of Language Structures which says it has two dominant orders: SOV and SVO (https://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_hun). And https://magyartanulas.github.io/word_order/ first gives examples with SVO, but then says: "If there is no article, the order becomes SOV."

Wouldn't it be best to just not mention Hungarian in the table as it might not be a good example of neither SOV nor SVO? Exarchus (talk) 22:31, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I decided to at least remove Hungarian from SOV, as I can't find any source that mentions it as such. Maybe it can be given as an SVO example, but it's not that clear to me. Exarchus (talk) 10:11, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That is no reason to remove all non-European languages from the SVO list! How about collapsing them as Standard Average European? —Tamfang (talk) 02:52, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]