Notice: This article is in the progress of being extended. For an earlier version of the article that is not in a "under construction" state: Object Verb Subject (Revision as of 22:45, 12 Feb 2004)

Table of contents

1 Explanation 2 Long Example 3 In Latin All Permutations of Expression Occur 4 See A/also

Explanation

This part between lines is for people from non-English speaking countries.--------------------- What is an object, subject, verb? The subject is roughly said who does an action in a sentence.
The object is roughly said what undergoes the action in a sentence.
The verb is of course what the subject does to the object.

OVS languages are a type of languages when classifying languages according to the dominant sequence of these constituents. In this case the sequence of the constituents Object Verb Subject. This sequence is the rarest. Examples of human languages that actually use it include Guarijio and Hixkaryana.

This sequence was chosen for the artificial language Klingon. A language spoken by the extraterestial Klingon race in the fictional universe of the Star Trek series, in order to make the language sound deliberately alien and counterintuitive to the human mind.

The other permutations of expression in the order of most common to languages to rarest to languages:

• Subject Object Verb (SOV) Sam oranges ate. (e.g. Persian, Latin, Turkish, Korean, Japanese)
• Subject Verb Object (SVO) Sam ate oranges. (e.g. English, German, Kiswahili, Chinese)
• Verb Subject Object (VSO) Ate Sam oranges. (e.g. Welsh and Arabic)
• Verb Object Subject (VOS) Ate oranges Sam. (e.g. Fijian)
• Object Subject Verb (OSV) Oranges Sam ate. (e.g. Xavante)
• Object Verb Subject (OVS) Oranges ate Sam. (e.g. the artificial language Klingon)

Long Example

In Latin All Permutations of Expression Occur

For example the ending of the in Latin common name Marcus changes in each of the following sentences because the noun case changes. Except for the name Marcus which is as it would be in Latin, this sentences are in English.

• Marcus hits Cornelia. (SVO, the most common permutation of expression in English)
• Cornelia hits Marcum. (SVO)
• Cornelia gives Marco a present. (Subject, Verb, [indirect object], [direct] Object, so SVO as well.)
• Cornelia shouts: "Marce, Marce, come! It's time for your difficult language home work." (SVO)

But what do the noun cases mean for what permutations of expression can be used? Well, it means of course that the word order can be much more random in Latin than in English and most contemporary languages. Because a reader or listener can see the noun case of a word it is not needed to stick to a certain sequence of words. A lot of the time Romans stuck to the SOV permutation of expression, in contrast of English that has normally an SVO sequence. But for example in Latin poetry it is very common that the sequence is changed to whichever sequence fits a nice rythm of the sentence.

The word sequences in the next sentences would be perfectly correct in Latin and the meaning would be perfectly clear, although in English the word order would be wrong or the meaning even misunderstood.

• Cornelia hits Marcus. (OVS, the Klingon sequence)
  • But which means: Marcus hits Cornelia.
• Marcum hits Cornelia. (OVS, again the Klingon sequence)
  
  • But which means: Cornelia hits Marcum.
• Marcum Cornelia hits. (OSV)
  
  • But which means: Cornelia hits Marcum.
• Marco gives Cornelia a present. ([indirect object], Verb, Subject, [direct] Object, so VSO)
  • But which means: Cornelia gives Marco a present.