Tags · Domain
Grammatical relations
Subject, object, and the other roles a clause assigns its participants.
Topics with this tag
In what order do languages arrange subject, object, and verb?
Two of the six logically possible orders dominate the world’s languages — SOV (Japanese, Hindi, Turkish) and SVO (English, Mandarin, Romance). The rest are rare, or set by information structure rather than a fixed template.
How does a language say an action was done for someone?
English hangs a beneficiary on the end of the clause with “for”, or slips it in front of the object: cook a meal for her, cook her a meal. Elsewhere the verb itself carries the news. Swahili adds a suffix to the verb, Tagalog rebuilds the clause around the person who profits, and across East and Southeast Asia, as in parts of West Africa, a second verb meaning “give” follows the first. Japanese splits that second verb several ways, so one act of cooking is worded differently depending on who ends up better off — and uses the passive when the answer is nobody.