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Linguistics & Grammar vocabulary · Syntax

Word order

Meaning in linguistics & grammar, with examples

nounCore term

In linguistics & grammar, word order means: The usual order in which words and sentence parts such as subject, verb and object appear in a language, for example subject-verb-object in English.

In Turkish: sözcük dizilişi, öğe dizilişi, kelime sırası

How it is used

Used in syntax, language typology and teaching (word order in questions, the position of adverbs). English is SVO and Turkish is SOV. English word order is fairly fixed because it has few case endings; Turkish word order is more flexible.

Example sentences

  1. Changing the word order in 'The dog bit the man' completely changes the meaning.

  2. Turkish learners sometimes keep Turkish word order and put the verb at the end of English sentences.

Common collocations

  • basic word order
  • SVO word order
  • free word order
  • word order in questions
  • syntaxThe study of how words are combined into phrases and sentences, and the rules of a language that decide which word orders and structures are possible.
  • subjectThe part of a clause that usually names who or what does the action or is described, and that the verb agrees with, such as 'my sister' in 'My sister works here'.
  • objectA noun phrase or pronoun that receives the action of a verb or follows a preposition, such as 'the email' in 'She sent the email'.
  • adverbA word that adds information to a verb, an adjective, another adverb or a whole sentence, such as how, when, where or how often something happens.

More terms: Syntax

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