Verb Subject Object

Different languages across the world follow certain word orders when creating sentences. Word order refers to the order of the subject, verb, and object in a sentence. There are six main word orders, which are as follows (from most to least commonly used):

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 third most commonly used word order, which is verb, subject, object. This is often shortened to VSO. We'll be taking a look at the definition of the verb subject object word order and the languages that use it, including some VSO examples and sentences.

Verb Subject Object Definition

Check out the definition of verb subject object below:

Verb Subject Object Word Order

The verb subject object word order may seem unusual to native English language speakers. The English language uses subject verb object (SVO) as its 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.

Let's take a look at how to identify the main verb, subject and object in a sentence:

Verb

The main verb in a sentence refers to an action. It is often called a "doing" word. For example, in the sentence "Polly speaks French," the verb is "speaks."

Subject

The subject in a sentence refers to the person or thing carrying out the action. For example, in the sentence "Callum hugs his best friend," the subject is "Callum" as he is the one doing the hugging.

Object

The object in a sentence refers to the person or thing that receives the action of the verb. For example, in the sentence "Jess bakes a pie," the object is "a pie" as it is the thing that is being baked by Jess.

Fig. 1 - In the sentence "Pedro walks the dog," the subject is "Pedro," the verb is "walks," and the object is "the dog."

Here is a table comparing VSO to SVO and SOV. This will help you to understand the differences between each word order. In each sentence, the verb will be highlighted in blue, the subject in pink, and the object in purple.

Verb Subject Object Languages

Some languages that use verb subject object are as follows:

• Standard Arabic

• Biblical Hebrew

• Hawaiian

• Spanish

• Welsh

• Irish

• Scottish Gaelic

• Classic Maya

• Egyptian

• Filipino

• Tongan

Verb Subject Object Examples

Now we know some languages that use verb subject object, here are some examples. Let's start with Standard Arabic:

Standard Arabic

Standard Arabic follows the VSO word order. For example:

Note that Arabic is written and read from right to left, unlike English.

Biblical Hebrew

Biblical Hebrew also follows the VSO word order. Like Standard Arabic, it is written and read from left to right.

Hawaiian

Hawaiian uses VSO, for example:

Spanish

The Spanish word order is more flexible than English, so it often uses more than one word order, including VSO. It is particularly used if something other than the subject or direct object acts as the subject of a predicate (part of a sentence containing a verb and giving information about the subject). For example:

Welsh

Some tenses in Welsh use what are known as simple verbs at the beginning of a sentence. As a result, these sentences use the VSO word order. For example:

Irish

Irish uses VSO in some phrases, for example:

VSO is also used when creating questions. For example:

Verb Subject Object Sentence

If English were to follow verb subject object as its natural word order, our sentences would look like this:

Fig. 2 - If the sentence "I am writing an essay" used the VSO word order, it would instead be "Am writing I an essay."

Here are some examples showing the difference between verb subject object and subject verb object:

Can you imagine if the word order in English was VSO? Everything you are reading now would seem very odd! You may not have thought much about word orders before, but now you know a bit more about them, you may start to notice the differences in sentence structures across different languages!