Talk:Verb–object word order

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Hello to anyone who has edited this VO page here on Wikipedia. My name is Reese and I am a college student at The Evergreen State College, and I am currently studying Linguistics. I have been assigned a project with a small group of my classmates to find a "stub" here on Wikipedia relating to linguistics and to expand upon it with useful and credible information. I have done independent research and research with the entirety of my group, and wish to add to this page. I found it useful to approach those who have previously added to a page I wish to edit and talk to them about why the page is the way it is, and if it is okay to make changes so long as the changes are useful information. Please get back to me, as it is pertinent to my studies. If I hear no response, we will be making changes regardless, but rest assured, they will should be welcomed. Courtesy! Thanks, -Reese

Dustin here, another evergreen student. Dumping some misc. data for a future edit. Frequency of OV languages: 46.02% (ex. Japanese) Frequency of VO languages: 53.98% (ex. English)

Example... English: The dog ate (v) the cat (o) Japanese: Inu wa neko (o) o tabemasshita (v)

I propose merging the pages for OV and VO languages, since they are bound to end up containing almost all the sme information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bunkerman91 (talk • contribs) 00:10, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Kallia another Evergreen Student working on the project. Information to be added:

Most languages belong to one of three types including: VS/VO, SV/VO (SVO), or SV/ OV (SOV).

Principle of Natural Information Flow: Found in SOV languages in which the subject will come after the object or the object and adjunct will change places. When the clause holds this principle, generally there are non-verbal component with established information coming before new information.

When the subject does not have established information and other parts have established information, the subject is placed before the verb.
"Ex:
(1) established (O) less established (S) non-established verb
Söhbətin bu yerində / məni gülmək tutdu.
conversation.of DEM place.3s.LOC 1s.ACC laugh.INF catch.PAST
‘At this point in the conversation laughter overcame me.’ (Joke 40)"

The first part demonstrates that information was given in an earlier context, but laughter was the new information being conveyed.

The Principle of Natural Information Flow also gives reason as to why the object proceeds the adjunct sometimes.
"Ex:
(2) established (O) established (Adj) less established verbs
Ana balalarIni başIna toplayIb sakit-oldu.
mother babies.GEN.ACC head.3s.DAT gather.GCNJ settle.down.PAST
‘The mother (hen) gathered her chicks under her wing and settled down.’ (Strange Incident 21)"

Again, the mother and her chicks were information communicated before, but the place in which she puts and gathers them is a new place. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Photosynthesize (talk • contribs) 00:20, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

thumbZ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.145.97.192 (talk) 13:20, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Title

Is VO language the best title for this? It's an article essentially about a certain typological property (word order in which the object follows the verb), not about the languages that have this property. This, along with the related [[OV language]] appear to stand in contrast to the more common pattern of Tone (linguistics) (with Tonal language a redirect to it), or the other word order articles, like Subject–object–verb (again with SOV language redirecting to it). Won't VO word order or Verb–object make more sense as titles? – Uanfala (talk) 22:39, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree with moving the page to VO word order or Verb–object. Personally, I prefer the former, but the latter is more consistent with the other word order articles. –Austronesier (talk) 09:39, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

I prefer VO word order too: it makes it clear the article's about word order, in contrast to something like "verb-object", which looks cryptic in a way that "subject-object-word" doesn't. We can even drop the abbreviation and spell it out as Verb–object word order, that's not a terribly long title. As for consistency, that's maybe a good thing to be aiming for, but I'm not sure if it might not actually be better to seek it by pushing the line in the opposite direction (SOV word order, Subject–object–verb word order etc). – Uanfala (talk) 23:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@Uanfala:I totally agree with you here, SOV word order or Subject–object–verb word order is better than Subject–object–verb etc., so I would support a RfM for all seven pages to keep the titles consistent. As for SOV word order vs. Subject–object–verb word order, I think SOV word order better fits WP:COMMONNAME. –Austronesier (talk) 09:54, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 16 January 2022

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved to spelled-out titles including "word order". After much-extended time for discussion, consensus favors keeping spelled-out terms in the title, but using "word order" for clarity to non-experts. BD2412 T 01:46, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

• VO language → VO word order
• OV language → OV word order
• Subject–object–verb → SOV word order
• Subject–verb–object → SVO word order
• Verb–subject–object → VSO word order
• Verb–object–subject → VOS word order
• Object–verb–subject → OVS word order
• Object–subject–verb → OSV word order

– As per user:Mike Cline's suggestion in Talk:Verb-initial word order#Requested move 26 December 2021, I propose this renaming for the sake of WP:TITLECON. I see that this exact move has been discussed on this talk page before; see the discussion Talk:VO language#Title from last year. user:Austronesier proposed moving all the word order-related pages in this manner. Nothing was done at last year's discussion because it wasn't formatted as a proper move request, so I am doing so now. ZeegoTheDeer (talk) 03:00, 16 January 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. Steel1943 (talk) 19:12, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

• Support per my arguments in the preceding discussion above. The feature of word order is a wider topic than the rigid (and often controversial) characterization of languages. E.g. many languages have both VSO and VOS word order, and the classification as a VSO or VOS language often hinges on theoretical preferences. Therefore, to talk about word order is also more in line with WP:NPOV.
  In support for the naming convention, I can also cite Google scholar searches: "XX word order" always gets more hits that "XX language" in searches starting from 2010, with ratios ranging between 988/913 for common "VSO" and 443/46 for exotic "OSV". Without the time filter, things look different: e.g. for "VSO" we get 1970/2660. This indicates that the hype of rigidly assigning languages to word order types is declining, especially among typologists (syntacticians might be still more prone to indulge in the quest of the "true" basic word order of a language, or even of language an sich → universal grammar).
  @ZeegoTheDeer: thank you for taking the initiative! –Austronesier (talk) 12:45, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Add I also support the alternative suggestions by @BarrelProof and @Amakuru to add "word order" to the non-abbreviated titles, thus "Verb–object word order" etc. –Austronesier (talk) 12:48, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose while the words "object", "verb" and "subject" are familiar to many people with basic knowledge of English grammar, the abbreviations VO, SOV etc. are linguistics jargon that is less likely to be recognizable to our readership. Acronyms in titles should be avoided except where necessary, which I don't think this one is—there is no need for "word order" in the title. The current article titles such as "Subject–object–verb" do a great job of covering the topic of word order without implying that every language uses a single order exclusively. Instead, for consistency I would support moving the first two to "Verb–object" and "Object–verb" (t · c) buidhe 13:46, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
• I suggest not using the abbreviations. And including "word order" seems to make it more readable. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 01:33, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
  • I reiterate those suggestions, noting the comments from buidhe and the comments later added by Dicklyon. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:43, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support per the discussion above. Buidhe raises a valid point about recognisability, but that in fact is an argument against all the current titles. Sure, any reader will know what "object" means, but what kind of animal would they think of something like "verb-object"? Is that a type of object, or maybe something that's intermediate between a verb and an object, or possibly some strange construct that has verbs and objects in it... For an average reader, "verb–object" is more cryptic than "VO word order"; in the latter case at least it's clear the thing is a type of word order. If we want to maximise recognisability, then "Verb–object word order" would be the preferred choice, with "VO word order" coming second.
  I'm wondering though, could there be any reason to prefer the acronyms (apart from concision)? I haven't followed the literature, but I'm wondering if there isn't any chance "S" and "O" could have been generalised here so that they're also used in analyses that don't take account of the grammatical relations of subject and object (i.e. if recourse is had directly to semantic roles, or if topic–comment relations are at stake)... – Uanfala (talk) 01:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose – the current titles are more meaningful and recognizable. The problem the Uanfala hypothesizes shouldn't be an issue, at least for users whose fonts let them see that those are dashes, not hyphens. I wouldn't object to adding "word order" though. Dicklyon (talk) 05:06, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Well, even if all our readers are keenly aware of the difference between hyphens and n-dashes – an assumption that's a wee bit unrealistic :) – then how do we know that they will instantly recognise that the n-dashes here indicate sequential order rather the relations that are more commonly associated with the dashes, like range or enumeration? – Uanfala (talk) 13:53, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
    • If we want to help readers with at the level of the title, then adding "word order" does it. It's not clear it's necessary, since the full meaning of a title doesn't need to be clear on its own. Dicklyon (talk) 16:29, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose acronyms, but support the addition of "word order" as per BarrelProof above. So, move the top two to "Verb–object word order" and "Object–verb word order", and then add "word order" to the other six titles while leaving them fully spelled out.  — Amakuru (talk) 08:25, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose - why would we benefit by obfuscating the subject of the articles behind acronyms? -- Netoholic @ 02:49, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
• Move to Verb–object word order; Object–verb word order, and Subject–object–verb word order etc. per ⁠ ⁠BarrelProof and Amakuru. Those are the full names of those phenomena, and would be instantly recognizable by non-experts. No such user (talk) 13:22, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
• These are all good points. Since my original proposal, I have also come to agree with the consensus to add "word order" but retain the full names otherwise. --ZeegoTheDeer (talk) 06:43, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
• Move per BarrelProof, Amakuru, and No such user. Acronyms run afoul of WP:ACROTITLE but "word order" should be added to the full names. Rublov (talk) 20:07, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.