Subject–object–verb

In linguistic typology, a subject–object–verb (SOV) language is one in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear or usually appear in that order. If English were SOV, "Sam oranges ate" would be an ordinary sentence, as opposed to the actual Standard English "Sam ate oranges". The label is often used for ergative languages such as Adyghe and Basque that do not have subjects but have an agent–object–verb order.