Subject Verb Object

When creating sentences, different languages follow particular word orders. This refers to the order of the subject, verb, and object in a sentence. The six main word orders (from most to least common) are as follows:

• SOV - subject, object, verb
• SVO - subject, verb, object
• VSO - verb, subject, object
• VOS - verb, object, subject
• OVS - object, verb, subject
• OSV - object, subject, verb

The focus of this article is the second most commonly used word order, which is subject, verb, object. This is often shortened to SVO. We'll be taking a look at the definition and grammar of subject, verb, object, along with some examples and the languages that use it as their dominant word order (including the English language!)

Subject Verb Object Definition

Check out the definition of subject verb object below:

Subject Verb Object Grammar

Before taking a look at some examples, it is important to focus on grammar and understand the purpose of the subject, verb, and object in a sentence. Let's take a look at each element in more detail:

Subject

The subject in a sentence refers to the person or thing carrying out an action. For example:

Verb

The main verb in a sentence is the action itself. You may have heard it being referred to as a "doing word" in school; that is essentially its purpose! For example:

Object

The object in a sentence refers to the person or thing that receives the action of the verb. For example:

It is worth noting that an object is not always needed in a sentence for it to make grammatical sense. The subject and verb, however, are necessary to create a meaningful sentence. For example:

Fig. 1 - The object in a sentence is not always needed, but the subject and verb are.

English Subject Verb Object

The English language uses subject verb object as the natural word order. A natural word order (also known as an unmarked word order) refers to the dominant, basic word order a language uses without having to change or add anything for emphasis. In English, the word order is fairly strict, meaning most sentences follow the same SVO structure.

However, there are exceptions, which are due to the different grammatical voices we can use to create sentences. Grammatical voice refers to the relationship between the action of a verb and the subject and object.

In English grammar, there are two grammatical voices:

1. Active voice

2. Passive voice

The most commonly used voice is the active voice, which occurs in sentences where the subject actively performs the action. Sentences in the active voice follow the subject-verb object word order. For example:

In this example, it is clear that the subject, John, is the person carrying out the action of building.

On the other hand, the passive voice is less commonly used. In sentences that use the passive voice, the subject is being acted upon, and the object assumes the position of the subject. The passive voice does not follow the SVO word order; instead, the structure is as follows:

Subject → Auxiliary verb 'to be' → Past participle verb → Prepositional phrase. For example:

Fig. 2 - The passive voice places focus on the object instead of the subject.

Subject Verb Object Examples

Check out some examples of sentences written in the subject verb object word order below. The SVO word order is used with any tense, so let's begin by looking at some examples written in the simple past tense:

Now here are some examples written in the simple present tense:

Finally, here are some examples written in the simple future tense:

Subject Verb Object Languages

We know that the English language uses subject verb object as the natural word order, but what about the other languages that use it too? It is the second most common word order, after all!

Below is a list of languages that use SVO as their natural word order:

• Chinese
• English
• French
• Hausa
• Italian
• Malay
• Portuguese
• Spanish
• Thai
• Vietnamese

Some languages are more flexible in terms of word order, so don't stick to just one "natural" order. For example, Finnish, Hungarian, Ukranian and Russian use both the subject verb object and subject object verb word orders equally.

Below are some example sentences of the SVO word order in different languages, along with the English translations: