| Order |
Example |
Usage |
Languages
|
| SOV |
"Sam apples 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, 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 apples." |
42%
|
42
|
Arabic (modern spoken varieties), Chinese, many European languages, Hausa, Hebrew, Indonesian, Kashmiri, Malay, Swahili, Thai, Vietnamese
|
| VSO |
"Ate Sam apples." |
9%
|
9
|
Arabic (modern standard), Berber languages, Biblical Hebrew, Filipino, Geʽez, Irish, Māori, Scottish Gaelic, Tongan, Welsh
|
| VOS |
"Ate apples Sam." |
3%
|
3
|
Algonquian languages, Arawakan languages, Austronesian languages, Car, Chumash, Fijian, Malagasy, Mayan languages, Otomanguean languages, Qʼeqchiʼ, Salishan languages, Terêna
|
| OVS |
"Apples ate Sam." |
1%
|
1
|
Äiwoo, Hixkaryana, Urarina
|
| OSV |
"Apples Sam ate." |
0%
|
|
Tobati, Warao, Haida
|
| Frequency distribution of word order in languages surveyed by Russell S. Tomlin in the 1980s[1][2] ()
|
