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Verb–subject–object


In linguistic typology, a verb–subject–object (VSO) language is one in which the most typical sentences arrange their elements in that order, as in Ate Sam oranges (Sam ate oranges). VSO is the third-most common word order among the world's languages, after SVO (as in English and Mandarin) and SOV (as in Latin and Japanese).

Families where all or many of the languages are VSO include the following:

Both Spanish and Greek resemble Semitic languages such as Arabic in allowing for both VSO and SVO structures: "Jesús vino el jueves"/"Vino Jesús el jueves, "Tu madre dice que no vayas"/"Dice tu madre que no vayas".

Formal Arabic is an example of a language that uses VSO. For example:

^* Arabic is written right-to-left

Another Semitic language, Biblical Hebrew, uses VSO, as seen here, in Exodus 33:1 and many other places in the Tanakh.

^* Words in Hebrew, as in Arabic, are written from right to left.

Word order is extremely flexible in Spanish and VSO word order is allowed in practically all situations, but it is particularly common where some element other than the subject or direct object functions as the subject of predication. Examples include:

In Welsh, some tenses use simple verbs, which are found at the beginning of the sentence followed by the subject and any objects. An example of this is the preterite:

Other tenses may use compound verbs, where the conjugated form of, usually, bod (to be) precedes the subject and other verb-nouns come after the subject. Any objects then follow the final verb-noun. This is the usual method of forming the present tense:

In Irish, phrases also use VSO:


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