Template talk:Language word order frequency

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)

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

Constructed Languages
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)
 * – 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)

Removal of Ancient Greek
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)

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)

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

standalone
"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)

Better example sentence without pronouns?
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)
 * 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)
 * 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)
 * 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)
 * 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)

Hungarian
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)


 * 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)

"This list doesnt have enough european languages"
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)