subjectverbobject

Subject–verb–object (SVO) is a term in linguistic typology describing a canonical sentence structure in which the subject performs the action of the verb on the object. In SVO sentences, the order is subject first, then the verb, and finally the object. This configuration is common across many languages and is often used as a basic organizing principle for syntax, though real-world sentences can vary due to emphasis, pronoun use, or information structure.

A clear example in English is: The cat chased the mouse. Here The cat is the subject, chased is the verb, and the mouse is the object. Many SVO languages handle ditransitives by placing both objects after the verb, as in The teacher gave the students a book, where the indirect object precedes the direct object. SVO does not preclude additional elements like adverbs or indirect phrases; their placement follows general syntactic rules that preserve the SVO backbone.

From a typological perspective, SVO is one of the most widely distributed basic word orders, especially in Europe, East Asia, and the Americas. Languages with SVO often rely more on analytic morphology and prepositions rather than extensive inflection to mark subject, verb, and object relationships. However, some SVO languages exhibit flexibilities in word order when topicalizing or focusing particular information, with grammatical relations still recoverable from context, pronouns, or case particles.

See also: SOV, VSO, word order, syntactic typology.