These descriptions are useful, but they can easily become oversimplified.

Languages rarely use just one method to show who is acting, who is affected, who receives something, or what role each participant plays. Instead, they usually combine several kinds of grammatical and contextual information.

This chapter explores how some of the world’s major languages solve the same basic communication problem:

How does a listener know who did what to whom?

One event, several layers of information

Consider this English sentence:

Sarah encouraged Daniel.

We can describe it on several levels.

Word classes

  • Sarah is a proper noun.
  • encouraged is a verb.
  • Daniel is a proper noun.

Grammatical functions

  • Sarah is the subject.
  • Daniel is the direct object.

Semantic roles

  • Sarah is the person providing the encouragement.
  • Daniel is the person receiving or experiencing it.

In this simple active sentence, the grammatical and semantic layers align neatly.

Now compare:

Daniel was encouraged by Sarah.

The basic event is almost the same. Sarah is still the source of the encouragement, and Daniel is still the person who receives it.

But the grammatical structure has changed:

  • Daniel is now the subject;
  • Sarah appears inside a by-phrase;
  • the verb is in the passive voice.

This is why grammatical roles cannot be identified only by asking who performs the action. Languages use grammar to organise events from different perspectives.

The main signals languages can use

Languages have several tools for marking grammatical relationships. The balance between them varies enormously.

1. Word order

The position of a word or phrase can indicate its role.

Compare:

Sarah called Daniel.
Daniel called Sarah.

In English, reversing the two names reverses the most natural interpretation of who made the call.

2. Case marking and other noun markers

A noun may change form or receive an ending that identifies its grammatical role.

In Hungarian:

Sarah felhívta Danielt.

The -t ending marks Daniel as the direct object.

Other languages may use inflectional case endings, clitics, particles, prepositions, or postpositions for related purposes.

3. Agreement on the verb

The verb may carry information about its subject or other participants.

Spanish:

Hablo.
“I speak.”

The ending of hablo identifies a first-person singular subject, so a separate pronoun is often unnecessary.

Some languages place even more information about participants inside the verb.

4. Special constructions

Passive constructions, question structures, topic constructions, and object-fronting patterns can change the usual arrangement of a sentence.

English:

Sarah opened the door.
The door was opened by Sarah.

Mandarin:

Subject–verb–object structures are common, but the bǎ construction places a marked object before the main verb.

5. Meaning, context, and shared knowledge

Grammar does not work in isolation.

Listeners also use:

  • the meanings of the words;
  • what is physically or socially plausible;
  • what has already been mentioned;
  • whether a participant is human or animate;
  • whether something is definite or already known;
  • intonation and emphasis.

Consider:

The child ate the sandwich.

Even without detailed grammatical analysis, our knowledge of the world makes one interpretation much more likely than the reverse.

But meaning becomes less helpful when both possibilities are plausible:

Sarah called Daniel.
Daniel called Sarah.

In such cases, grammatical signals become essential.

English: word order does much of the work

English has relatively little case marking on ordinary nouns. The nouns Sarah and Daniel do not visibly change according to whether they are subjects or objects.

As a result, word order is highly important.

The most common neutral pattern is:

Subject – Verb – Object

or:

SVO

For example:

Sarah called Daniel.
Daniel thanked Sarah.

Changing the order changes the most natural interpretation:

Sarah encouraged Daniel.
Daniel encouraged Sarah.

This does not mean that every noun phrase before a verb is automatically the subject or that every noun phrase after it is automatically the object.

English also uses:

  • auxiliary verbs;
  • pronoun case;
  • prepositions;
  • verb agreement;
  • passive constructions;
  • question structures;
  • relative clauses;
  • context.

Pronoun forms provide additional information

Compare:

She called him.
He called her.

English pronouns preserve distinctions that ordinary nouns have mostly lost.

  • she and he are subject forms;
  • her and him are object forms.

This means that English is not based on word order alone.

Questions change the usual order

In many questions, an auxiliary verb appears before the subject:

Did Sarah call Daniel?

The first element is not the subject. The subject remains Sarah.

Passive sentences reorganise the participants

Compare:

Sarah encouraged Daniel.
Daniel was encouraged by Sarah.

In the active sentence, Sarah is the subject.

In the passive sentence, Daniel becomes the grammatical subject, even though his semantic role in the event remains largely the same.

English therefore relies heavily on word order, but word order operates inside a larger grammatical system.

French: relatively fixed order, but special pronoun positions

French also has a dominant SVO pattern:

Sarah appelle Daniel.
“Sarah is calling Daniel.”

With full noun phrases, word order plays a major role in distinguishing subject and object.

But object pronouns usually appear before the verb:

Sarah l’appelle.
“Sarah is calling him.”

The object pronoun le, shortened here to l’, does not stand in the position where a full object noun phrase would normally appear.

Compare:

Sarah appelle Daniel.
Sarah l’appelle.

This demonstrates an important general principle:

A language may use different word-order rules for full noun phrases and short grammatical pronouns.

French also uses:

  • subject pronouns;
  • object pronouns;
  • prepositions;
  • auxiliary verbs;
  • agreement in certain constructions;
  • relatively fixed clause patterns.

French is therefore strongly word-order-dependent, but it cannot be reduced to the rule “subject before the verb, object after the verb”.

Spanish: word order, verb endings, and object marking

Spanish is often described as an SVO language, but its sentence structure is more flexible than English.

A neutral sentence might be:

Sara llamó a Daniel.
“Sarah called Daniel.”

Several signals operate at once.

The verb identifies features of the subject

The form llamó indicates third-person singular past tense.

Spanish verbs often provide enough information for the subject pronoun to be omitted:

Llamé a Daniel.
“I called Daniel.”

The ending of llamé shows that the subject is first-person singular.

This property is sometimes described as pro-drop, meaning that an unstressed subject pronoun can frequently remain unspoken.

The personal a marks many human objects

In:

Sara llamó a Daniel.

the a before Daniel helps mark a human, specific direct object.

This is traditionally called the personal a.

It does not appear before every object:

Sara compró un libro.
“Sarah bought a book.”

The presence of a depends on factors including personhood, animacy, specificity, and the particular construction.

Object pronouns have their own positions

Sara lo llamó.
“Sarah called him.”

The object pronoun lo appears before the finite verb, even though a full noun object normally follows it.

Word order also communicates focus

Spanish allows several orders that would sound unusual or highly marked in ordinary English.

The choice may depend on:

  • what is already known;
  • what is new;
  • what is being contrasted;
  • what the speaker wants to emphasise.

Spanish therefore combines word order, verb morphology, object marking, pronouns, and information structure.

Hungarian: case endings signal roles, word order shapes the message

Hungarian makes extensive use of suffixes.

A direct object is commonly marked with -t:

Sarah felhívta Danielt.
“Sarah called Daniel.”

Because Danielt carries an object marker, it can appear in several positions without becoming the subject.

Compare:

Sarah felhívta Danielt.
Danielt Sarah hívta fel.
Sarah Danielt hívta fel.

In all three sentences, Danielt remains the object.

However, the sentences do not communicate exactly the same thing.

Hungarian word order is flexible, not random

The order often reflects:

  • topic;
  • focus;
  • contrast;
  • whether information is new or already known;
  • the scope of negation;
  • the relationship between the verb and its prefix.

For example:

Sarah felhívta Danielt.

This may be a relatively neutral statement.

Sarah Danielt hívta fel.

This tends to place contrastive focus on Danielt: Sarah called Daniel rather than someone else.

Danielt Sarah hívta fel.

Depending on context and intonation, this may contrast Sarah with another possible caller.

Case endings allow Hungarian word order to perform more discourse-related work, but they do not make word order unimportant.

The verb also provides information

Hungarian verbs can indicate:

  • person;
  • number;
  • tense;
  • mood;
  • whether the object is definite in many constructions.

For example, Hungarian distinguishes between verb forms associated with indefinite and definite objects:

Olvasok egy könyvet.
“I am reading a book.”

Olvasom a könyvet.
“I am reading the book.”

The distinction is not identical to English definiteness, but it shows how information about participants can also appear on the verb.

Hungarian therefore distributes grammatical information across endings, verb forms, word order, and context.

Russian: case marking and information structure

Russian nouns, adjectives, and pronouns can change form according to grammatical case.

Cases help express relationships such as:

  • subject;
  • direct object;
  • possession;
  • recipient;
  • instrument;
  • location.

Because these relationships are often marked morphologically, Russian allows more word-order variation than English.

A neutral pattern is frequently SVO, but other orders are possible.

The order may signal:

  • what the sentence is about;
  • what information is new;
  • contrast;
  • emphasis;
  • stylistic effects.

There is no single universal object ending

It would be misleading to say that Russian marks every object with one particular ending.

The accusative form depends on:

  • grammatical gender;
  • number;
  • declension class;
  • animacy.

For some nouns, the accusative looks like the nominative. For others, especially animate masculine nouns, it may resemble the genitive.

This means that the role of a noun can be signalled by a combination of:

  • its ending;
  • agreement on adjectives;
  • the form of pronouns;
  • verb meaning;
  • word order;
  • context.

Russian is case-rich, but case marking does not eliminate every possible ambiguity.

Mandarin Chinese: strong positional patterns without European-style inflection

Mandarin Chinese has comparatively little inflection.

Verbs do not normally change according to:

  • the person of the subject;
  • singular or plural agreement;
  • tense in the way English or Spanish verbs do.

Nouns also do not have a case system comparable to Russian or Hungarian.

The dominant basic order is SVO:

Sarah called Daniel.

In a typical Mandarin equivalent, the subject comes before the verb and the object after it.

Because word forms remain relatively stable, position is an important clue.

But Mandarin is not simply a rigid sequence of unchanging words.

Aspect is not the same as tense

Mandarin uses particles and other means to indicate whether an event is:

  • completed;
  • ongoing;
  • experienced previously;
  • continuing.

These are often described in terms of aspect, which concerns how an event unfolds or is viewed.

Topic structures are common

A sentence may begin with a topic that establishes what the rest of the sentence is about.

The topic is not always identical to the grammatical subject.

This makes the simple rule “the first noun is the subject” unreliable.

The bǎ construction places the object before the verb

Mandarin can use a structure commonly called the bǎ construction.

In simplified form:

Subject + bǎ + object + verb phrase

This construction often presents the object as something specifically affected, handled, changed, or disposed of by the event.

The object therefore appears before the main verb, even though Mandarin is generally classified as SVO.

Mandarin can express plurality

It is sometimes claimed that Mandarin “has no plural”. That is too strong.

Number is often left unmarked when it can be inferred from context, but Mandarin has several ways to express plurality, including:

  • numerals;
  • quantifiers;
  • classifiers;
  • contextual interpretation;
  • the restricted plural marker -men with certain human nouns and pronouns.

Mandarin uses relatively little inflection, but it has a complex grammar built from word order, particles, constructions, classifiers, aspect markers, and discourse context.

Japanese: case particles and the distinction between subject and topic

Japanese has a dominant SOV order:

Subject – Object – Verb

A simplified example is:

Sara-ga Daniel-o hometa.
Sarah-NOM Daniel-ACC praised
“Sarah praised Daniel.”

The particle -ga commonly marks a nominative or subject-related phrase.

The particle -o commonly marks a direct object.

Because the noun phrases are marked, some reordering is possible, although the verb normally remains near the end of the clause.

Wa is not simply another subject marker

Japanese -wa is often introduced to learners as a subject marker, but this is misleading.

It primarily marks a topic or a contrastive element.

Compare conceptually:

  • ga may identify or introduce the grammatical subject;
  • wa presents something as the topic or sets it in contrast with alternatives.

The topic and the subject may refer to the same thing, but they do not have to.

A sentence can contain both a topic and a grammatically distinct subject.

This distinction is central to understanding Japanese information structure.

Particles can be omitted

In casual speech, some particles may be omitted when the intended relationship is obvious from context.

This means that Japanese listeners also rely on:

  • verb meaning;
  • animacy;
  • shared knowledge;
  • previous discourse;
  • expected word order.

Particles are powerful grammatical signals, but they are not the only source of information.

Korean: similar surface patterns, its own grammatical system

Korean is also predominantly SOV and uses markers after noun phrases.

Common markers include:

  • -i/-ga for subject-related or nominative marking;
  • -eul/-reul for direct objects;
  • -eun/-neun for topic or contrast.

The exact form varies according to the final sound of the preceding word.

Like Japanese, Korean frequently distinguishes between topic and subject.

The topic marker may indicate:

  • what the sentence is about;
  • contrast with another possibility;
  • information already established in the conversation.

Word order is flexible within constraints

Because noun phrases can carry markers, Korean allows some reordering for focus or discourse purposes.

However, this does not mean that every order is equally natural. The verb normally appears at the end, and different arrangements can create different emphases.

Markers may disappear in conversation

In informal Korean, case particles can sometimes be omitted when their function is recoverable.

Listeners then depend more strongly on:

  • context;
  • plausibility;
  • word order;
  • intonation;
  • the meaning of the verb.

Japanese and Korean are structurally similar in several respects, but this similarity should not be confused with proof that they are close genetic relatives. Typological resemblance and historical relatedness are separate questions.

Modern Standard Arabic: word order, agreement, and case

Arabic requires a particularly careful explanation because Modern Standard Arabic and the many spoken Arabic varieties do not behave identically.

In formal Modern Standard Arabic, both of the following broad patterns are possible:

  • verb–subject–object, or VSO;
  • subject–verb–object, or SVO.

The choice can affect agreement patterns and information structure.

Formal Arabic has grammatical case

In fully vocalised Classical Arabic and formal Modern Standard Arabic, short final vowels may mark:

  • nominative case;
  • accusative case;
  • genitive case.

In simplified terms, these endings can help distinguish grammatical roles.

However, several qualifications are essential.

Ordinary Arabic writing usually omits short vowels

Most everyday Arabic text does not display the short vowel marks that would make many case endings visible.

Spoken dialects largely lack the full case system

In everyday varieties of Arabic, the classical case endings have mostly disappeared.

Even formal speech does not always realise them consistently

Speakers may use some formal case endings in careful contexts while omitting others.

As a result, actual interpretation often depends on a combination of:

  • word order;
  • agreement;
  • prepositions;
  • pronouns;
  • verb morphology;
  • context.

Root-and-pattern morphology is a different issue

Arabic is famous for building families of words from consonantal roots combined with vocalic and morphological patterns.

This system helps form related verbs, nouns, and adjectives.

It is an important feature of Arabic word structure, but it should not be confused with the narrower question of how a sentence distinguishes its subject from its object.

Word formation and sentence function are related parts of grammar, but they are not the same mechanism.

Hindi: postpositions and split ergativity

Hindi has a dominant SOV order:

Subject – Object – Verb

It uses postpositions, which are similar in function to English prepositions but follow the noun phrase rather than preceding it.

English:

with Daniel

Hindi follows the general pattern:

Daniel with

The noun may also change into an oblique form before certain postpositions.

The marker -ko

The marker -ko may identify:

  • a recipient;
  • a goal;
  • certain direct objects.

But not every direct object receives -ko.

Its use is influenced by factors such as:

  • humanness;
  • animacy;
  • definiteness;
  • specificity;
  • discourse prominence.

This is an example of differential object marking: some objects receive overt marking while others do not.

The marker -ne

In certain completed transitive constructions, the agent-like participant receives the marker -ne.

For example, in a simplified gloss:

Mira-ne Ram-ko dekha.
Mira-ERG Ram-OBJ saw
“Mira saw Ram.”

The -ne marker is not a general subject marker used in every tense and construction.

It appears under specific grammatical conditions, particularly in many perfective transitive clauses.

Split ergativity

Hindi is often described as displaying split ergativity.

This means that the way participants are marked changes according to factors such as:

  • aspect;
  • transitivity;
  • clause structure.

A participant that behaves like an ordinary unmarked subject in one construction may receive -ne in another.

Hindi therefore cannot be accurately described with a simple permanent pairing such as:

  • -ne always means subject;
  • -ko always means object.

The system depends on the interaction of case marking, aspect, agreement, animacy, specificity, and verb structure.

A comparative overview

Language Common basic order Major signals Important qualification
English SVO word order, pronoun case, auxiliaries, prepositions questions and passive clauses alter the usual pattern
French SVO relatively fixed order, pronouns, prepositions object pronouns commonly appear before the verb
Spanish SVO word order, rich verb forms, personal a, pronouns subjects may be omitted and order varies with focus
Hungarian flexible, often SVO case suffixes, verb forms, word order, intonation flexible order expresses topic, focus, and contrast
Russian flexible, often SVO case, agreement, word order, context accusative marking varies by noun type and animacy
Mandarin SVO word order, particles, constructions, context topic and bǎ structures depart from simple SVO
Japanese SOV case particles, topic marking, context wa marks topic or contrast, not simply subject
Korean SOV noun markers, topic marking, verb-final structure particles may be omitted when context is sufficient
Modern Standard Arabic VSO and SVO agreement, formal case, word order, pronouns full case endings are limited in ordinary speech and writing
Hindi SOV postpositions, case marking, agreement, aspect -ne and -ko appear only under particular conditions

The table shows dominant tendencies, not absolute rules.

A language classified as SVO can also produce other orders. A language with case marking still uses word order. A language with particles may omit them. A language with rich verb morphology still relies on context.

Languages divide the work differently

It is common to describe languages as either:

  • rigid or free;
  • simple or complex;
  • analytic or inflected;
  • position-based or ending-based.

These contrasts can be useful, but only if we treat them as tendencies rather than complete descriptions.

English places more responsibility on order

Because ordinary English nouns carry little visible case information, their position is crucial.

Sarah called Daniel.
Daniel called Sarah.

A small change in order changes the interpretation.

Hungarian and Russian place more information on nouns

Case forms make grammatical relationships more visible on the noun phrase itself.

This gives word order greater freedom to communicate:

  • topic;
  • focus;
  • contrast;
  • what is old or new information.

Spanish shares information between several systems

Spanish uses:

  • verb endings;
  • object marking;
  • pronoun placement;
  • word order;
  • discourse context.

No single signal explains the whole system.

Mandarin builds grammar without extensive inflection

Mandarin relies more heavily on:

  • position;
  • aspect markers;
  • particles;
  • classifiers;
  • specialised constructions;
  • context.

The absence of European-style conjugation does not imply the absence of grammatical complexity.

Japanese, Korean, and Hindi mark relationships after nouns

These languages often place grammatical material after noun phrases.

But their particles and postpositions are not simple labels mechanically attached in every sentence. Their use interacts with topic, contrast, animacy, aspect, and shared knowledge.

The key insight is:

Languages solve similar communication problems by distributing information differently across words, endings, particles, order, verb forms, and context.

“Fixed” and “free” word order are relative terms

English is often called a fixed-word-order language, while Hungarian or Russian may be called free-word-order languages.

Neither label should be taken literally.

English allows many arrangements:

Sarah gave Daniel the book.
Sarah gave the book to Daniel.
The book was given to Daniel by Sarah.
What did Sarah give Daniel?

These are not random permutations. Each follows a grammatical construction.

Similarly, Hungarian and Russian do not permit words to be arranged arbitrarily without changes in meaning, emphasis, or naturalness.

A more accurate distinction is:

  • some languages use position more strongly to identify grammatical roles;
  • others use position more strongly to organise information and emphasis;
  • all languages constrain word order in systematic ways.

Redundancy is a feature, not a flaw

Languages often signal the same relationship more than once.

In an English sentence, the subject may be indicated by:

  • position before the verb;
  • subject-form pronouns;
  • agreement on the verb;
  • the surrounding construction.

In Spanish, the subject may be recoverable from:

  • a spoken noun phrase;
  • a pronoun;
  • the ending of the verb;
  • the previous conversation.

In Hungarian, an object may be signalled by:

  • the -t suffix;
  • a definite or indefinite verb form;
  • word order;
  • verb meaning;
  • context.

This overlap makes communication more robust.

Listeners may miss a sound, encounter background noise, process an unfamiliar accent, or misunderstand one clue. Multiple partially overlapping signals help them reconstruct the intended meaning.

What should a language learner look for?

When studying a new language, asking only “What is the basic word order?” is not enough.

A better approach is to build a hierarchy of clues.

1. Look at the word order

  • Where is the verb?
  • What appears before and after it?
  • Is this a neutral sentence or a marked construction?

2. Look for markers on or around nouns

  • Does the noun carry a case ending?
  • Is there a particle?
  • Is there a preposition or postposition?
  • Does a human or definite object receive special marking?

3. Examine the verb

  • Does it identify the person or number of the subject?
  • Does it agree with the object?
  • Does it indicate aspect, voice, or definiteness?
  • Is an auxiliary verb involved?

4. Identify the construction

  • Is the sentence active or passive?
  • Is it a question?
  • Is something being topicalised or contrasted?
  • Is there a special object-fronting construction?

5. Separate grammatical role from meaning

Ask both:

  • Who is the grammatical subject?
  • Who is the agent, experiencer, recipient, or affected participant?

They may be the same, but they do not have to be.

6. Use context

  • What has already been mentioned?
  • Which participant is more likely to perform the event?
  • What does the speaker emphasise?
  • Could an apparently missing subject or object be understood from the conversation?

This approach is more reliable than trying to apply English sentence patterns directly to every other language.

From grammar rules to a system of signals

Traditional grammar teaching often presents isolated rules:

  • English uses subject–verb–object order.
  • Hungarian marks the object with -t.
  • Japanese uses -ga and -o.
  • Spanish may omit the subject.
  • Hindi uses -ne and -ko.

Each statement contains some truth, but none describes a complete language.

The more useful question is:

Which signals does this language provide, and how do they work together?

This turns grammar from a list of exceptions into a coordinated system.

A learner no longer sees word order, endings, particles, agreement, and context as unrelated topics. They become different solutions to the same underlying problem.

The main idea

Languages must help listeners identify the relationships between participants, actions, states, and events.

They can do this through:

  • word order;
  • case marking;
  • particles;
  • prepositions and postpositions;
  • verb agreement;
  • voice;
  • information structure;
  • meaning and context.

No major language relies on only one of these.

English places unusually strong weight on position. Hungarian and Russian encode more information in noun forms. Spanish distributes information across word order, verb morphology, and object marking. Mandarin combines position with particles and specialised constructions. Japanese and Korean use noun markers and topic structure. Arabic combines order, agreement, and—in formal varieties—case. Hindi adds aspect-sensitive case marking and differential object marking.

The systems differ, but the communicative challenge is shared:

How can a listener reconstruct who is involved, what happened, and how the participants relate to one another?

Once learners begin looking for systems of signals rather than isolated grammar rules, unfamiliar languages become easier to analyse—and their differences become far more meaningful.

References and further reading

Butt, Miriam. The Structure of Complex Predicates in Urdu. CSLI Publications, 1995.

Comrie, Bernard. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Dryer, Matthew S., and Martin Haspelmath, editors. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Haspelmath, Martin. Research on comparative concepts, case marking, and cross-linguistic grammatical categories.

Li, Charles N., and Sandra A. Thompson. Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. University of California Press, 1981.

Ryding, Karin C. A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic. Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Shibatani, Masayoshi. The Languages of Japan. Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Universal Dependencies. Universal Guidelines for Morphology and Syntax.

World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Chapters on constituent order, case marking, alignment, and grammatical relations.