Objectverbsubject

Objectverbsubject (OVS) is a term used in linguistics to describe a language with a basic clause order in which the object precedes the verb, and the verb precedes the subject. In canonical form, the sequence is object–verb–subject. It is one of several possible basic word orders found across languages, and it is comparatively rare compared with more common orders such as SVO or SOV.

Because the order provides limited cues to semantic roles, many OVS languages rely on explicit case marking, agreement, or clitic pronouns to signal which noun is the object and which is the subject. Morphology and inflection often play a crucial role in maintaining clarity when word order alone could lead to ambiguity. Information structure and discourse factors also influence word order in OVS languages; fronting a constituent can topicalize it, while other elements follow in a more flexible arrangement.

In practice, a typical transitive sentence in an OVS language places the object first, the verb second, and the subject third. For example, an illustrative sentence with an object–verb–subject sequence might be rendered as “The ball chased the boy,” though actual languages vary in how they mark agreement and case and in how strongly the basic order is fixed.

Because OVS is relatively rare and may interact with other syntactic phenomena, the term is mainly used in descriptive and theoretical contexts to explore the range of possible sentence structures and the factors that shape word order. See also word order, syntactic typology, subject–object–verb.