Object–verb word order
{{Short description|Languages which place objects before verbs}}
{{Linguistic_typology topics}}
In linguistics, an OV language (object–verb language), or a language with object-verb word order, is a language in which the object comes before the verb. OV languages compose approximately forty-seven percent of documented languages.{{cite journal
| last1 = Tomlin
| first1 = Russell
| date = March 1988
| title = Basic Word Order: Functional Principles
| journal = Language
| volume = 64
| issue = 1
| pages = 196–197
| publisher = Linguistic Society of America
| jstor = 414811
| doi=10.2307/414811}}
|last1=Dryer
|first1=Matthew S.
|editor1-last=Dryer
|editor1-first=Matthew S.
|editor2-last=Haspelmath
|editor2-first=Martin
|title=World Atlas of Language Structures
|date=2013
|publisher=Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
|location=Leipzig
|access-date=31 May 2015
|chapter=Order of Object and Verb
|chapter-url=http://wals.info/chapter/83}}
They are primarily left-branching, or head-final, with heads often found at the end of their phrases, with a resulting tendency to have the adjectives before nouns, to place adpositions after the noun phrases they govern (in other words, to use postpositions), to put relative clauses before their referents, and to place auxiliary verbs after the action verb.{{cite book
|title= From OV to VO in early Middle English: Volume 60 of Linguistik aktuell - Issue 60 of Linguistik Artuell/Linguistics Today Series
|last= Trips
|first= Carola
|author-link= Carola Trips
|year= 2002
|publisher= John Benjamins Publishing Company
|isbn= 90-272-2781-0
|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=zUD_MLxwN_8C&dq=OV+language&pg=PA1}} Of the OV languages that make use of affixes, many predominantly, or even exclusively, as in the case of Turkish, prefer suffixation to prefixation.
For example, English would be considered a VO language, and Japanese and Korean would be considered to be OV.
{{fs interlinear|indent=3
|top= Japanese:
|犬 が 猫 を 追いかけた
|inu ga neko o oikaketa
|{} {} object {} verb|style3= font-variant: small-caps;
|The dog chased (verb) the cat (object)}}
{{fs interlinear|indent=3
|top= Korean:
|개는 고양이를 쫓았다
|gae-neun go-yang-i-reul jjo-chatt-da
|{} object verb|style3= font-variant: small-caps;
|The dog chased (verb) the cat (object)}}
{{fs interlinear|indent=2
|top= Turkish:
|Köpek, kediyi kovaladı.
|
|{} object verb|style3= font-variant: small-caps;
|The dog chased (verb) the cat (object)}}
Some languages, such as Finnish, Hungarian, Russian, and Yiddish, use both OV and VO constructions,{{cite book
|title= Word Order Change in Icelandic: From OV to VO
|last= Hróarsdóttir
|first= Thorbjörg
|year= 2001
|publisher= John Benjamins Publishing Company
|location= Philadelphia, PA, USA
|isbn= 9789027299208}}
but in other instances, such as Early Middle English, some dialects may use VO and others OV. Languages that contain both OV and VO construction may solidify into one or the other construction. A language that moves the verb or verb phrase more than the object will have surface VO word order, and a language which moves the object more than the verb or verb phrase will have surface OV word order.