| Order | Example | Usage | Languages | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SOV | "Cows grass eat." | 45% | 45
|
Bengali, Burmese, Hindustani, Japanese, Korean, Oromo, Persian, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Turkish |
| SVO | "Cows eat grass." | 42% | 42
|
Arabic (modern spoken varieties), Chinese, English, French, German, Hausa, Hebrew, Italian, Malay, Portuguese, Spanish, Standard Average European, Swahili, Thai, Vietnamese |
| VSO | "Eat cows grass." | 9% | 9
|
Filipino, Geʽez, Irish, Māori, Tuareg-Berber, Welsh |
| VOS | "Eat grass cows." | 3% | 3
|
Car, Fijian, Malagasy, Qʼeqchiʼ, Terêna |
| OVS | "Grass eat cows." | 1% | 1
|
Hixkaryana, Urarina |
| OSV | "Grass cows eat." | 0% | Tobati, Warao | |
| Frequency distribution of word order in languages surveyed by Russell S. Tomlin in the 1980s[1][2] (
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