OSV: Why is this word order so rare in languages?

There are six basic word orders. Which languages have different ones and where? Why is this one so rare?

Art, animation and music by me. Open doc above to read sources for claims and for pics, sfx.

~ Briefly, but with small spoilers ~

When I was young, I got interested in how sentences are arranged in various languages. When my grammar books treated basic word orders as different types of languages, I began to imagine them as a linguistic horoscope. I'm back with animated questions about that language zodiac:

- What even is word order?
- How many languages have different ones and where?
- Why is SOV so common and OSV so rare?

Along the way, we'll realize that the two least common word orders, OVS and OSV, are found among the languages of the Amazon. Check out my sources document above to even more.

[mtssmrkov]

In Czech and most probably all Slavic languages you can use all word orders and still make complete sense because of word declensions, which makes the languages super flexible, its also very useful for poetry or such things since you can make sentences sound more beautiful

[killymxi]

The map at 7 minutes would've benefited from showing each ordering in isolation briefly.
Once the map becomes crowded by more common orderings, it is difficult to spot where other orderings were added.

[mirrortherorrim]

As has been noted, Slavic languages can use any word order. The word order doesn't matter for us Slavs, but, similarly to Korean, apparently, may denote shades of meaning (and SOMETIMES what's the meaningful part. E.g. in Russian:
SVO Капибара съела кукурузу. = Capybara ate corn. (That's what happened)
VSO Съела капибара кукурузу. = Capybara ate corn. (It did. Finally)
SOV Капибара кукурузу съела. = Capybara ate corn. (Has eaten. I've checked)
OVS Кукурузу съела капибара. = Capybara ate corn. (It was indeed capybara)
VOS Съела кукурузу капибара. = Capybara ate corn. (The end)
OSV Кукурузу капибара съела. = Capybara ate corn. (May be capybara hasn't eaten something else, but it definitely ate corn)

[LetMeGetAUhhh]

I love your grammar-focused vids. Word order is definitely a description of a language's general behavior rather than a concrete rule. I'm a Turkish speaker, and the standardized Turkish word order is very strictly SOV. It's almost impossible to find an official document or piece of media that uses anything other than SOV if it wants to be taken seriously by anyone. Teachers often scold kids for deviating from the sacred SOV, so much so that a sentence that breaks the SOV rule is called "devrik tümce" (knocked-over sentence) in Turkish. And yet, as much as 50% of spoken Turkish sentences break the SOV rule, with SVO, OSV, VSO and VOS all occurring quite frequently depending on what the speaker wishes to emphasize.

[mtutor]

Teaching a Slavic language, I realized that teaching (and learning) a language that has one (dominant/only) word order is easy but teaching (and learning) a language with a flexible word order is very difficult. In Czech, SVO is usually neutral. But everything else is possible, the only question is what you want to emphasize and what implicit (or even explicit of course) question your sentence answers. In simple sentences it may be easier but with more complex ones, even identifying the neutral word order is sometimes challenging.

[feleslucis-emanueldearaujo]

Hello, I'm a speaker of Libras, and I have been studying sign language linguistics for some time, so I really think I can enrich the knowledge on Libras' word-order aspect. IMO, many Sign Languages cannot be properly included in word-order categories due to their inner rules being completely different from the way spoken languages work. While many spoken languages use word-order to demonstrate a syntactic aspect (English and Chinese being good examples), Sign Languages usually don't do that in the same way, since they work within a 3D environment whose rules work more or less like how objects are organized within the world.
Let's take into consideration the use of OSV in Libras. This word order is more common when you need to specify the place in which something happens, for example: "BEACH + I + SWIM", or "SCHOOL + I + GO". The reason the object is the first thing in these phrases have to do with a beach being a place that needs to be there in the first place for you to be able to swim in it, and the same thing goes for the school. If you sign "I + SWIM + BEACH" it sounds illogical, because you swim in something, but the swimming couldn't have been done in the beach, since it existed after the swimming took place. So the rule is basically that the place in which something is done needs to be signed before the verb. For example "BEACH I SWIM" (OSV), "BEACH + SWIM" (OV, the S being implied), and "BEACH + SWIM + I" (OVS), I + BEACH + SWIM (SOV) are all legitimate ways to say that "I swim in the beach" in LIBRAS.
Another reason why OSV is relatively common in LIBRAS (and other sign languages less influenced by the spoken language) is due to the existence of directional verbs. For example, "ME + HE + PUNCHED (in the face)" is totally acceptable, since the verb "PUNCH" is directional, so independently of the order, you will be able to know who got punched due to the directional aspect. And the use of "ME" here is totally optional, and used more for emphasis, so it would be treated more like "it was me whom he punched", and "HE + PUNCHED (me in the face)" is completely acceptable and more common still. I'm planning to make a video on how sign languages work soon, so if you're interested in learning more about that, you just need to wait for a while.

[NativLang]

I got lost reading about this. I'm back. Here's what I found out.

[zefciu]

My native Polish leans towards SVO, which sounds the most natural. But due to a case system, you can use a different word order, especially if the topic of your sentence is is different than the subject. So the topic is marked by order and the subject by case.

[mjmulenga]

We definitely use OVS in Zambian Sign Language. It helps make the direction of the signs clear.
"Capybara ate corn" works, but the verbs are usually directional. You'd be directing the action to an object you haven't defined yet.
It's more vibrant to define the corn in space, then define the capybara in another location, and then direct the eating action from eater to eaten. That can easily work for OSV, and does.
I hope that's clear.

[Serenity_Dee]

Fun fact: when designing Klingon, Mark Okrand chose OSV as the default word order specifically because it's the rarest in human languages. He also chose a set of sounds that are extremely unlikely to be found in any natural human language, because of how our languages tend to fall with sounds.

[jopeteus]

I speak a language with "free" word order (Finnish)
The different word orders are used when languages like English would use stress and emphasis in speech

In other words, the language can sound a bit monotone but still can emphasise certain words or topics in sentences

[antonsofronov]

In russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian we can shuft between all 6 word orders, but rarer types are used mostly in literature and old slavic sagas

[urinstein]

In English (as well as German and surely many other European languages), you can come across OSV under certain circumstances and it does seem to fit perfectly into the idea of topic-first sentence structure.
Here's a nonsense example sentence:
"Have you found them?"
"The green one I have, but the red one I am still looking for."

So, even though for us Europeans (or IE language speakers more specifically) topic is kind of an exotic and tough to grasp concept, we do seem to an intuitive understanding of it, in the few places it does show itself in our languages.

[paige]

I was really glad to see a sign language mentioned. The whole time I was hoping you'd talk about ASL. It often uses OSV sentence and despite what many think it's not like English

[RogerTheil]

We typically think of English as an SVO language, but I have noticed that MANY older English texts VERY often switch up word order, all depending on context and focus. In fact, this seems to be very traditional and common in English. It seems that the spread of English as a trade, and now global language has not only vastly simplified its vocabulary, but has more or less standardized its word order and has made the language MUCH more direct. Kinda sad, but interesting to consider just how flexible English really is and can be spoken.

[Rinabow]

For me as a Japanese speaker, the standard word order definitely leans toward SOV, but it's a lot more flexible than it seems on the surface. In general, as long as the verb goes at the end, most of the information before it can be moved around or omitted entirely, so there can occasionally be sentences that are phrased with OSV. When I think to times that myself or friends have done this in conversation, it's often a way of shifting emphasis.

[ken.the.person]

As a Japanese speaker learning Korean, I think you should’ve pointed out that korean (and japanese) have particles(subject particle comes before subject, object particle comes before object) so changing sentence order is a lot easier to change.
In poetry, even VSO, SVO, is common

[prim]

Loved the message at the end. It's a blessing anytime you upload. You're just a holy grail of normalizing linguistic enthusiasm. And I never leave your videos without having learned something new. So, thank you for this

[johnvanleeuwen]

In Hungarian, the verbs are split in two groups: those for which the 'subject' (as per the given definition) is conjugating it, and those for which the 'object' is conjugating it; this creates two possible interpretations for the word order possibilities. In common Hungarian, the user of the language will put the most important first, be it the verb, the object, or the subject, but by observing this all except OSV are just as common and valid word orders. If however, you consider that subject and object are exchanging their role with respect to the verb, one could also reason that all 6 word orders are occurring in common Hungarian.

[AlexanderChilds]

As a Korean and Japanese speaker, I appreciate this pointing out that it is not just SOV or SVO, especially that Korean (and in-turn Japanese as well) is not just SOV but also can be natural to find OSV. It is hard to explain this to others who are confused why the word order, outside of the verb, may not typically matter because the subject(s) and object(s) are marked. This was a great explanation!