Talk:Object–agent–verb

Please give us some examples from natural languages, not this Yoda nonsense!

Also, concepts such as OSV refer to unmarked word order. Sentences like 'Spaghetti I do like' are undoubtedly OSV, but they are marked (i.e., not normal order). Including examples like this is not only a poor substitute for examples from true OSV languages, it is also misleading. English is not an OSV language, despite such examples.

Bathrobe 4 April 2005


 * "Do" is not a necessary marking - "Spaghetti I like." is unambiguously parsable by an English speaker (or at least by me) as being equivalent in meaning to "I like spaghetti.". "Do" is just a marker for emphasis, regardless of word order (compare "I do like spaghetti.").  I consider OSV word order to be an archaic and/or poetic, but perfectly valid, form of English.  It survives in normal speech in some stock phrases, such as "Right you are." (706000 Google hits).  This is why Yoda (yeah, him again), although sounding noticeably different from everyday speech, is readily understandable to a normal English speaker.  -- Milo


 * Situations like this are perhaps more akin to topic-fronting, or the topic-comment structure of many Asian languages, with reduncies removed for normal speech. Consider that you can say, "Spaghetti: I like it." which is definitely a Topic-Comment format. Remove the intonations and pauses that are used to indicated the demarcation between topic and comment, and you're saying "Spaghetti I like it." but in ordinary speech that sounds weird, partially because of the redundant "it", so just remove it! Spaghetti I like! But that still sounds odd. Why front the topic? Well, to respond to a question! Do you like meatballs and spaghetti? The meattballs, not so much, but the spaghetti I like! Augur

This construct exists, in a lesser form, in English
Curious. Although it isn't the subject or the direct object...should "I want that orange Sam has" be considered as an trivial example of sorts? Carson


 * No. In that example, "Sam has" is a relative clause. The sentence is equivalent to "I want that orange that Sam has". The clause is restricting the orange to one where the statement "Sam has it" is true. Because "it" refers to the head of the clause, it's dropped, as in many other relative clauses. For example, in the phrase "The guy that drove the car", the clause "that drove the car" restricts "the guy" to one where the statement "He drove the car" is true. Again, because "He" is a referent to the head of the clause, it's dropped to reduce redundancy. This is why the original sentence, "I want that orange Sam has" is not actually an example. It's straight-forward SVO order: "I(S) want(V) that orange(O) [Sam has]". Augur

English appearance
"In the future or with but" is very incomplete. You could just as easily say "To Rome I went", which is in the past tense. As far as I can tell, it would be more systematic to say that OAV appears in English when the object is stressed. "Oranges I like" sounds odd out of context, but you can imagine the speaker saying this in addition to a preceding conversation in which he says e.g. he doesn't like apples. A source from a book on English grammar (preferably not a textbook) would be useful.

I've already added the pretty obvious case of a relative clause with the object as pronoun. Hairy Dude 02:35, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Klingon and OAV
A previous version of the page claimed that Klingon commonly used OAV order.

To the best of my knowledge, that order is only used in ritual language used during toasts. The regular word order is OVS. -- pne (talk)

Italian
Is not Italian OAV? Take the sentence: "Ti amo." It translates as "Thee (I) love." All Italian sentences are this way. "Mi dispiace." = "Me (I am) sorry." etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.107.54.253 (talk) 13:16, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Terms such as OAV only make sense in cases where all three parts are explicitly expressed as distinct words. In the case of 'ti amo' there is only an (indirect) object and a verb, no separate word to express the agent. The sentence isn't OAV, but just OV. The agent can be derived from the inflection of the verb, yes. But you can't really say whether the agent comes before the verb or after it, since it's actually inherently part of the same word. What you're doing, however, is translating into English and then concluding that since the English translation of the verb by itself is AV, the Italian must be too. But to see how this breaks down, just pick another language to translate into, i.e. Dutch: Van jou houd ik. This means 'You love I' - i.e. OVA, not OAV. --CodeCat (talk) 11:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)