Order | Example | Usage | Languages |
SOV | "Sam oranges ate." | 45% | 45 |
Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Ainu, Amharic, Ancient Greek, Akkadian, Armenian, Avar, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bambara, Basque, Bengali, Burmese, Burushaski, Chukchi, Elamite, Hindustani, Hittite, Hopi, Hungarian, Itelmen, Japanese, Kabardian, Korean, Kurdish, Latin, Lhasa Tibetan, Malayalam, Manchu, Mongolian, Navajo, Nepali, Nivkh, Oromo, Pali, Pashto, Persian, Quechua, Sanskrit, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu, Tigrinya, Turkish, Yukaghir |
SVO | "Sam ate oranges." | 42% | 42 |
Arabic (modern spoken varieties), Chinese, English, French, Hausa, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Kashmiri, Malay, Modern Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, Standard Average European, Swahili, Thai, Vietnamese |
VSO | "Ate Sam oranges." | 9% | 9 |
Arabic (modern standard), Berber languages, Biblical Hebrew, Filipino, Geʽez, Irish, Māori, Scottish Gaelic, Tongan, Welsh |
VOS | "Ate oranges Sam." | 3% | 3 |
Algonquian languages, Arawakan languages, Austronesian languages, Car, Chumash, Fijian, Malagasy, Mayan languages, Otomanguean languages, Qʼeqchiʼ, Salishan languages, Terêna |
OVS | "Oranges ate Sam." | 1% | 1 |
Hixkaryana, Urarina |
OSV | "Oranges Sam ate." | 0% | |
Tobati, Warao |
Frequency distribution of word order in languages surveyed by Russell S. Tomlin in the 1980s[1][2] () |