Everything about Object Verb Subject totally explained
Object Verb Subject (OVS) or
Object Verb Agent (OVA) is one of the
permutations of expression used in
linguistic typology. OVS denotes the sequence '
Object Verb Subject' in unmarked expressions:
Oranges ate Sam,
Thorns have roses. While the
passive voice in English may appear to be in the OVS order, this isn't an accurate description. In an active voice sentence, for example
Sam ate the oranges, the grammatical subject,
Sam is the '
agent', who is acting on the '
patient,'
the oranges, which are the object of the verb
ate. In the passive voice,
The oranges were eaten by Sam, the order is reversed so that patient is followed by verb, followed by agent. However,
the oranges become the subject of the verb
were eaten which is modified by the prepositional phrase
by Sam which expresses the agent, maintaining the usual Subject Verb (Object) order. OVS sentences in English
can be parsed when pronouns mark the case (
Him like I.) But such a sentence is clearly nonstandard. This sort of reversed order can also be used in English when relating an adjective to a noun (for example "cold is Alaska"), although here
cold is a
predicative adjective, not an object.
OVS is a class of languages used in the classification of languages according to the dominant
sequence of these
constituents. In this case the sequence of the constituents is Object Verb Subject. This sequence is the rarest of the six possible orderings of Subject, Verb, and Object. Examples of human languages that use it include
Tamil particularly in the reported speech and passive voice. The above example Orange-kalai (Accusative object) sapitavan (past tense verb with first person singular conjugation) Sam (Subject) is grammatically correct in Tamil,
Guarijio,
Hixkaryana, and to some extent also
Tapirapé.
Although not dominant, this sequence is also possible when the object is stressed in languages that have relatively free word order due to case marking.
Romanian,
Basque,
Esperanto,
Hungarian,
Finnish and, to some extent,
German are examples. Some languages, such as
Swedish, which normally lack any extensive case marking, allow such structures when
pronouns (which are marked for case) are involved.
The Object Verb Subject sequence also occurs in
Interlingua, although the makes no mention of it excepting passive voice. Thomas Breinstrup, editor in chief of
Panorama in Interlingua, sometimes uses the sequence in articles written for Panorama.
This sequence was chosen for the
artificial language Klingon, a language spoken by the
extraterrestrial Klingon race in the fictional universe of the
Star Trek series, in order to make the language sound deliberately alien and counterintuitive. Thus, Klingon uses the rarest permutation of expression, which is expected given the designer's goals.
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