In linguistic typology, subject–verb–object (SVO) is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third.
Although some subject–verb–object languages in West Africa, the best known being Ewe, use postpositions in noun phrases, the vast majority of them, such as English, have prepositions.
Non-European SVO languages usually have a strong tendency to place adjectives, demonstratives and numerals after the nouns that they modify, but Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian and Indonesian place numerals before nouns, as in English.
Some linguists have come to view the numeral as the head in the relationship to fit the rigid right-branching of these languages.
Russian allows the use of subject, verb, and object in any order and "shuffles" parts to bring up a slightly different contextual meaning each time.
For example, "Roweru ci nie kupię" (I won't buy you a bicycle), "Od piątej czekam" (I've been waiting since five).
In Kashmiri, the word order in embedded clauses is conditioned by the category of the subordinating conjunction, as in Example 3. myeto.meeeswasphyikyirworryyithi.nilesttsiyoutemyisto.himciThyletterdyikhwill.givemye ees phyikyir yithi.ni tsi temyis ciThy dyikhto.me was worry lest you to.him letter will.give"I was afraid you might give him the letter"English developed from such a reordering language and still bears traces of this word order, for example in locative inversion ("In the garden sat a cat.")