Word Order in

different
languages.
Parts of Speech
How many parts of speech are there?
8
What are they?
Nouns
Pronouns
Adjectives
Verbs
Adverbs
Prepositions
Conjunctions
interjections
What is special about nouns, adjectives,
verbs, and adverbs?
Have a look at the following example:
Book (noun) booked (verb)
What have I just done?
Added a suffix ed .
Is the meaning/semantics of the word still the
same?
No.
Lets take the word (lexis) of quick.
What is this?
An adjective.
What happens if I add the suffix ly?
Is it still an adjective?
No, now it has changed into an adverb
changing its role in the sentence.
It no longer describes the noun but the
verb.
We can split the parts of speech into 2
categories:
Lexical and functional
Lexical (words which can be changed by
adding a prefix, or suffix)
Functional (fixed words)
Lexical Functional
nouns pronouns
adjectives prepositions
verbs conjunctions
adverbs interjections
Even though the word order maybe
different from language to language
there are some commonalities.
They all seem to have a subject, verb ,
and object.
The order will depend on the language
itself and its syntax.
What is word order?

Word order in linguistics typically refers to the
order of subject (S), verb (V) and object (O) in
a sentence. For example, in English the word
order of a typical sentence is Subject-Verb-
Object (SVO). To English speakers this seems
obviously the only logical arrangement. Yet
many languages do have a different word
order.

http://applet-magic.com/wordordertyp.htm


The term word order could mean something
broader but so far this is the extent of its meaning.
Various language analysts have investigated the
varieties of word order in the languages of the
world, starting in 1963 with Joseph Greenberg of
Stanford University. In particular, they have
focused on the extremely limited range of
variation of word order among languages. For
example, Russell Tomlin investigate the basic word
order of a sample of 402 languages and found the
vast majority fall in two categories, as the table
below shows.
Word Order Distribution of Languages Basic Word
OrderProportion of
LanguagesExamples:
Subject-[Verb-Object]42%English,Indonesian
Subject-[Object-Verb]45%Japanese, Turkish
Verb-Subject-Object 9%Welsh, Zapotec
[Verb-Object]-Subject3%Malagasy
[Object-Verb]-Subject1%
Object-Subject-Verb0%
Russell Tomlin, Basic Word Order:
Functional Principles, (Croom Helm, London, 1986)
page 22
Examples
I have a cat. (English)
I = subject have = verb
cat = object
= SVO
WS use google translate
Subject Verb Object
Ja iman matschka.
Homework:
Based on your findings from this lesson
what can you say about word order and
why is it important to know it if you are
learning a language?