The six clause orders
Subject (S), object (O) and verb (V) can appear in six linear orders. WALS chapter 81 documents all six: Japanese SOV, Mandarin SVO, Irish VSO, Nias VOS, Hixkaryana OVS and Nadëb OSV are its cited examples. These are modern-language comparison points. The chapter’s baseline is a declarative transitive clause with two full noun arguments; different orders in questions, subordinate clauses or pronoun constructions do not automatically alter that baseline.
To use this notation, identify participants before reading their positions. A language may mark them with case or agreement, and a particular clause may be passive or topicalized. Word order can be flexible without being meaningless: information structure, animacy, focus and discourse may condition the alternatives. “Lacking a dominant order” does not mean every permutation is equally frequent.
Inside phrases
Object–verb order can be compared with the order of a noun phrase and its adposition, a possessed noun and possessor, a noun and adjective, or a relative clause and head noun. Each is a separate feature. WALS chapter 95 finds a strong association of OV with postpositions and VO with prepositions. WALS chapter 97 shows that adjective–noun order is much less predictable from the position of the object. Do not fill one column of a typological profile from another without attested evidence.
A word order claim also depends on how “word” and “phrase” are segmented. Clitics may have a fixed position unrelated to full noun phrases. A manuscript line break may be graphic rather than grammatical. An inscription around a monument may require reconstructing its reading sequence before clause order can be analyzed.
Historical corpora
A short ancient corpus may overrepresent prayers, decrees, names or administrative formulae. Count independent clauses from a defined corpus, not every repeated formula as a fresh observation. Exclude restorations when they determine the order, and report how many examples remain. If just two full-noun transitive clauses survive, a “dominant order” may be an overstatement. Publish the examples and the inclusion rule so another reader can revise the label.
Exercise: take ten clauses from one dated edition. Identify S and O by case, agreement or context, classify clause type and whether both are overt full noun phrases, then count order only for the eligible set. Report the exclusions alongside the result.
Modern-language examples on this page clarify a linguistic pattern. They do not establish unattested sounds or forms for an ancient language. Follow the cited sources below and keep editorial readings separate from the surviving trace.