SVO languages and the OV: VO typology

Abstract

Greenberg (1963) formulated a number of implicational universals that refer to the order of various syntactic elements. He classified languages on the basis of their order of subject, object and verb into three types, which he labelled I, II and III, and which correspond to what are commonly known as VSO, SVO and SOV languages, respectively. Since that time, evidence for the existence of the three other logically possible orders, VOS, OVS and OSV, has been presented (see Keenan, 1978; Derbyshire & Pullum, 1981, 1986), thus leaving us with a typology of six types. Lehmann (1973, 1978) and Vennemann (1974, 1976) collapsed these six types into two types OV and VO. Implicit in this move is the idea that the fundamental parameter is the order of verb and object and that the position of the subject is less important. In treating VSO, VOS and SVO as subtypes of the general type VO, the claim is that these three types are similar to each other in their other word order characteristics and different from OV languages. More recently, a number of linguists, including Comrie (1981: 90, 94–95; 1989: 96, 100–101), Mallinson & Blake (1981: 379), Siewierska (1988: 18–19) and Payne (1990: 19), but most particularly Hawkins (1980: 199; 1983: 30), have criticized Lehmann and Vennemann for collapsing VSO, VOS and SVO languages into a single category VO. They all argue that the available evidence does not support the claim that SVO languages pattern like VSO and VOS languages. The purpose of this paper is to argue that, although some of these criticisms are not without merit, Lehmann and Vennemann were largely right: with certain well-defined exceptions, the word order properties of SVO languages differ little from those of VSO and VOS languages. In short, it will be shown that with respect to a large number of word order characteristics, we do find a basic split between VO and OV languages.