In linguistics, syntax is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), agreement, the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning. There are numerous approaches to syntax which differ in their central assumptions and goals.
In linguistic typology, subject–verb–object (SVO) is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant sequence of these elements in unmarked sentences. English is included in this group. An example is "Sam ate oranges." The label often includes ergative languages that do not have subjects, but have an agent–verb–object (AVO) order.
A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects. Transitivity is traditionally thought of as a global property of a clause, by which activity is transferred from an agent to a patient.
Linguistic typology is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages. Its subdisciplines include, but are not limited to: qualitative typology, which deals with the issue of comparing languages and within-language variance; quantitative typology, which deals with the distribution of structural patterns in the world's languages; theoretical typology, which explains these distributions; syntactic typology, which deals with word order, word form, word grammar and word choice; and lexical typology, which deals with language vocabulary.
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Someone who engages in this study is called a linguist. See also the Outline of linguistics, the List of phonetics topics, the List of linguists, and the List of cognitive science topics. Articles related to linguistics include:
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but are not limited to direct objects, indirect objects, and arguments of adpositions ; the latter are more accurately termed oblique arguments, thus including other arguments not covered by core grammatical roles, such as those governed by case morphology or relational nouns . In ergative-absolutive languages, for example most Australian Aboriginal languages, the term "subject" is ambiguous, and thus the term "agent" is often used instead to contrast with "object", such that basic word order is often spoken of in terms such as Agent-Object-Verb (AOV) instead of Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). Topic-prominent languages, such as Mandarin, focus their grammars less on the subject-object or agent-object dichotomies but rather on the pragmatic dichotomy of topic and comment.
In linguistics, word order is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic sub-domains are also of interest. The primary word orders that are of interest are
In syntax, verb-second (V2) word order places the finite verb of a clause or sentence in second position with a single constituent preceding it, which functions as the clause topic.
Yaqui, locally known as Yoeme or Yoem Noki, is a Native American language of the Uto-Aztecan family. It is spoken by about 20,000 Yaqui people, in the Mexican state of Sonora and across the border in Arizona in the United States. It is partially intelligible with the Mayo language, also spoken in Sonora, and together they are called Cahitan languages.
In linguistics, an OV language is a language in which the object comes before the verb. OV languages compose approximately forty-seven percent of documented languages.
In linguistics, head directionality is a proposed parameter that classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial or head-final. The head is the element that determines the category of a phrase: for example, in a verb phrase, the head is a verb. Therefore, head initial would be "VO" languages and head final would be "OV" languages.
The subject-side parameter, also called the specifier–head parameter, is a proposed parameter within generative linguistics which states that the position of the subject may precede or follow the head. In the world's languages, Specifier-first order is more common that Specifier-final order. For example, in the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures (WALS), 76% of the languages in their sample Specifier-first. In this respect, the subject-side parameter contrasts with the head-directionality parameter. The latter, which classifies languages according to whether the head precedes or follows its complement, shows a roughly 50-50 split: in languages that have a fixed word order, about half have a Head-Complement order, and half have a Complement-Head order.
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. VSO is the third-most common word order among the world's languages, after SOV and SVO.
In linguistic typology, a verb–object–subject or verb–object–agent language – commonly abbreviated VOS or VOA – is one in which the most-typical sentences arrange their elements in that order which would equate to something like "Ate oranges Sam." It is relatively rare as a default word order, only accounting for 3% of the world's languages. Out of the six possible word orders, it is the fourth-most common default word order among the world's languages. It is a more common default permutation than OVS and OSV, but is significantly rarer than SOV, SVO and VSO. Families where all or many of the languages are VOS include the following:
In linguistic typology, a subject–object–verb (SOV) language is one in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence always or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence, as opposed to the actual Standard English "Sam ate oranges" which is subject–verb–object (SVO).
In linguistic typology, object–verb–subject (OVS) or object–verb–agent (OVA) is a rare permutation of word order. OVS denotes the sequence object–verb–subject in unmarked expressions: Oranges ate Sam, Thorns have roses. While the passive voice in English may appear to be in the OVS order, this is not an accurate description. In an active voice sentence, for example Sam ate the oranges, the grammatical subject, Sam, is the agent, who is acting on the patient, the oranges, which are the object of the verb ate. In the passive voice, The oranges were eaten by Sam, the order is reversed so that patient is followed by verb, followed by agent. However, the oranges become the subject of the verb were eaten which is modified by the prepositional phrase by Sam, which expresses the agent, maintaining the usual subject–verb–(object) order.
This article provides a grammar sketch of Basque grammar. Basque is the language of the Basque people of the Basque Country or Euskal Herria, which borders the Bay of Biscay in Western Europe.
In linguistics, inversion is any of several grammatical constructions where two expressions switch their canonical order of appearance, that is, they invert. There are several types of subject-verb inversion in English: locative inversion, directive inversion, copular inversion, and quotative inversion. The most frequent type of inversion in English is subject–auxiliary inversion in which an auxiliary verb changes places with its subject; it often occurs in questions, such as Are you coming?, with the subject you is switched with the auxiliary are. In many other languages, especially those with a freer word order than English, inversion can take place with a variety of verbs and with other syntactic categories as well.
A topic-prominent language is a language that organizes its syntax to emphasize the topic–comment structure of the sentence. The term is best known in American linguistics from Charles N. Li and Sandra Thompson, who distinguished topic-prominent languages, such as Korean and Japanese, from subject-prominent languages, such as English.
In syntax, verb-initial (V1) word order is a word order in which the verb appears before the subject and the object. In the more narrow sense, this term is used specifically to describe the word order of V1 languages. V1 clauses only occur in V1 languages and other languages with a dominant V1 order displaying other properties that correlate with verb-initiality and that are crucial to many analyses of V1. V1 languages are estimated to make up 12–19% of the world’s languages.
