Object–subject word order

OS is notable for its statistical rarity as a default or predominant word order among natural languages.

[3] Despite their low relative frequency, languages that use OS order by default can be found across a wide variety of families, including Nilotic,[4] Austronesian, Mayan, Oto-Manguean, Chumashan, Arawakan,[5] Cariban, Tupi–Guarani, Jê, Nadahup,[6] and Chonan.

'Note that Polinsky's principle does not state anything about the order of the indirect object and the subject relative to each other, hence the difference between Malagasy (IO–S) and Päri (S–IO) in this regard.

In a 1979 study, Desmond C. Derbyshire and Geoffrey K. Pullum reported that predominant object-initial word order only occurs in the Amazonian language area.

Amazonian languages with object-initial order include Hixkaryana, Urubu, Apurinã, Xavante, and Nadëb.

[6] However, since Derbyshire and Pullum's study, examples of languages with object-initial order have been found outside the Amazon.

OV structure is most commonly found in languages with SOV order, such as Japanese and Turkish.

[12] As for object-initial languages, Edward L. Keenan III (1978) notes that features associated with OV order are present in Hixkaryana, for example.

The scarcity of OS as a default word order has been observed since at least 1963, when Joseph Greenberg proposed the tendency of subjects to precede objects as his first universal.

Conversely, a language that postpones the subject will require the listener to process a larger portion of the utterance in order to determine how relevant it is.

[f] They argue that the global prevalence of SO order, and SVO in particular, has been amplified by the colonial expansion of the English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch empires (all of which speak SVO languages) and the resultant mass language extinction events in the continents which they colonized.

However, this English bias does not explain the high accuracy score of SOV in particular, and VSO to a lesser extent, relative to all the OS orders.

The researchers hypothesize that there may be a universal cognitive bias in favor of placing agents before patients, but note that this hypothesis has yet to be tested with participants whose native language is not English.