svo

Subject–verb–object (SVO) is a basic sentence structure in which the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. It is one of the most common basic word orders in the world's languages. In SVO languages, the typical sentence structure places the action after the subject and before the object, as in English: The cat eats fish. Other well-known SVO languages include Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Malay, and Indonesian.

While SVO is considered the canonical order, many languages allow some flexibility for emphasis or topic focus. Word order can be altered in question formation or for discourse purposes, and auxiliary verbs or particles may cause inversion or restructuring without changing the underlying SVO pattern. In languages with SVO, grammatical relations are often indicated by function words or by topic–comment structures rather than by extensive inflection.

In typology, SVO is contrasted with other basic orders such as SOV (subject–object–verb) and VSO (verb–subject–object). It is particularly common among analytic languages and is the predominant order in many language families, including most of Europe, the Americas, and parts of Asia. As with any language, individual languages can exhibit variation and exceptions to the basic order.

Note: SVO can also be an acronym for other concepts in different domains; this article discusses the linguistic term.