Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Do subjects come at the start of Finnish sentences?
Languages regarded as SVO include: Albanian, Arabic dialects, Assyrian, Bosnian, Chinese, English, Estonian, Finnish (but see below), French, Ganda, Greek, Hausa, Icelandic (with the V2 restriction), Igbo, Italian, Javanese, Kashubian, Khmer, Latvian, Macedonian, Malay (Malaysian and Indonesian), Modern Hebrew, Polish, Portuguese, Quiche, Reo Rapa, Romanian, Rotuman, Russian (but see below), Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Thai and Lao, Ukrainian (but see below), Vietnamese, Yoruba and Zulu.
Japanese and several other null-subject languages are topic-prominent languages; some of these languages require an expressed topic in order for sentences to make sense. In Japanese, for example, it is possible to start a sentence with a topic marked by the particle "wa", and in subsequent sentences leave the topic unstated, as it is understood to remain the same, until another one is either explicitly or implicitly introduced. For example, in the second sentence below, the subject ("we") is not expressed again but left implicit:
In linguistics, a grammatical agent is the thematic relation of the cause or initiator to an event. The agent is a semantic concept distinct from the subject of a sentence. Whereas the subject is determined syntactically, primarily through word order, the agent is determined through its relationship to the action expressed by the verb. The word comes from the present participle "agens, agentis" ("the one doing") of the Latin verb "agere", to "do" or "make".
Tokelauan is a quite free flowing language as the sentence structures can vary greatly. Although there is a preferred method of ordering the phrase (i.e, argument, subject, case complement), the language allows for different variations. There are certain rules when it comes to sentence permutations when it comes to “subject shifting” or “case scrambling.” Generally, across these sentence permutations, the parts of speech, such as argument, subject, and case complements, have to stay together. Meaning, the argument is one section that would shift together and subject is its own unit.
The second sentence structure used in Pingelapese would be intransitive verb sentences. An intransitive verb has no object attached to it. For example, Richard winked. In Pingelapese must be a stative verb or an active verb. A stative verb is when the person or object is affected by said verb. An active verb occurs if the action is performed by the subject. There is a specific word order for intransitive sentences too. This word is order Subject-Verb. Referring back to the previous example, Richard (subject) winked (verb).  There are also cases when the word order used is Verb-Subject for intransitive sentence structure, however not all intransitive verbs can use the Verb-Subject word order. Verb-Subject word order is only available in Pingelapese when referencing unaccusative verbs or by discourse pragmatics. Intransitive sentences also known as "existential" have a postverbal subject the majority of the time. Intransitive verbs only have one solid grammatical relation which is the subject of the sentence. When the verb is active the entity is doing the action.
Like most Insular Celtic languages, Manx uses verb–subject–object word order: the inflected verb of a sentence precedes the subject, which itself precedes the direct object. However, as noted above, most finite verbs are formed periphrastically, using an auxiliary verb in conjunction with the verbal noun. In this case, only the auxiliary verb precedes the subject, while the verbal noun comes after the subject. The auxiliary verb may be a modal verb rather than a form of ("be") or ("do"). Particles like the negative ("not") precede the inflected verb. Examples:
A pro-sentence is a sentence where the subject pronoun has been dropped and therefore the sentence has a null subject. Languages differ within this parameter, some languages such as Italian and Spanish have constant pro-drop, Finnish and Hebrew for example are partial pro-drop languages and Japanese and Tamil fall into the category of discourse or radical pro-drop languages. There are also languages such as English, German and Swedish that only allow pro-drop within very strict stylistic conditions. A pro-sentence is a kind of pro-form and is therefore anaphoric.
Examples of sentences that are (or make) statements:Examples of sentences that are not (or do not make) statements:The first two examples are not declarative sentences and therefore are not (or do not make) statements.
The third and fourth are declarative sentences but, lacking meaning, are neither true nor false and therefore are not (or do not make) statements. The fifth and sixth examples are meaningful declarative sentences, but are not statements but rather matters of opinion or taste. Whether or not the sentence "Pegasus exists." is a statement is a subject of debate among philosophers. Bertrand Russell held that it is a (false) statement. Strawson held it is not a statement at all.
Since Finnish is an inflected language, word order within sentences can be much freer than, for example, English. In English the strong subject–verb–object order typically indicates the function of a noun as either subject or object although some English structures allow this to be reversed. In Finnish sentences, however, the role of the noun is determined not by word order or sentence structure as in English but by case markings which indicate subject and object.
In analytic languages such as English, subject-verb-object order is relatively inflexible because it identifies which part of the sentence is the subject and which one is the object. ("The dog bit Andy" and "Andy bit the dog" mean two completely different things, while, in case of "Bit Andy the dog", it may be difficult to determine whether it's a complete sentence or a fragment, with "Andy the dog" the object and an omitted/implied subject.) The situation is more complex in languages that have no word order imposed by their grammar; example: Russian, Finnish, Ukrainian, and Hungarian have both the VO and OV constructs in their common word order uses.
In Jyväskylä the English-speaking classes are located in Kortepohja Elementary School (grades 1-6) and in Viitaniemi School (grades 7-9).
English-speaking classes are intended for families coming from abroad and staying temporarily or permanently in Finland, and for Finnish families in which English is spoken. Currently, there are 32 students in the English-speaking classes of Viitaniemi School. Most of them have Finnish as their mother tongue but there are some who study Finnish as their foreign language. Instruction in most theoretical subjects is given in English but in practical subjects, as well as in Swedish, the students are integrated into Finnish-speaking groups.
An inverted sentence is a sentence in a normally subject-first language in which the predicate (verb) comes before the subject (noun)..
In this sentence, the subject noun phrase "je" comes at the beginning of the sentence, the verb "croi" comes the next and then the object noun phrase "qu'elle..." follows to form SVO word order. If we were to topicalize the object, then we would have two noun phrases before the verb, which will cause the ambiguity on which of the two noun phrases is the subject and which is the object.
In English grammar, a right-branching sentence is a sentence in which the main subject of the sentence is described first, and is followed by a sequence of modifiers that provide additional information about the subject. The inverse would be a Left-branching sentence. The name "right-branching" comes from the English syntax of putting such modifiers to the right of the sentence. For example, the following sentence is right-branching.
Woleaian has many different sentences types—and the type of sentence determines the word order. The first types of sentences are major and minor sentences. Major sentences are expressions that contain a subject and a predicate. (Sohn, Woleaian Reference Grammar, 1975). Within a major sentence it can be broken up into two types, simple and complex sentences. Simple major sentences have a subject associated with a predicate. In a simple major sentence, the subject and predicates are interchangeable—so sometimes the subject comes first, and sometimes the predicate comes first. Simple major sentences can then be broken up into either equational or predicative. In an equational sentence the subject always follows the predicate, whether a question or statement. In predicative sentences, a subject or noun phrase usually follows a predicate. Two or more simple sentences together within one sentence produces a complex major sentence. Complex major sentences can either be coordinative or subordinative. Minor sentences are without "...a subject, a predicate, or both, but still express a complete thought.” (Sohn, Woleaian Reference Grammar, 1975). Just as major sentence can be divided into two types, so can minor sentences. Some refer back to the context and complete it, (completive), and some that appear independently, (exclamatory). (Sohn, Woleaian Reference Grammar, 1975). The problem with equational and predicative statement and question sentences in Woleaian is that you cannot differentiate between the question and statement based on how the words are arranged. An example of this in an equational sentence is ‘‘“Iiy semal sar skuul”’’, which can translate to “He is a student" or "is he a student?”—and in a predicative sentence, ‘‘“Go weri saw we”’’ which can translate to “You saw the child" or "Did you see the child?” (Sohn, Woleaian Reference Grammar, 1975).
Particles are an essential component of Yan-nhaŋu verb conjugation. Added to a sentence before a verb in the primary, secondary, tertiary, or quaternary form, they provide additional information about tense or mood. For example, the continuous particle "mana" is used very frequently in combination with the primary verb form to show a present continuous action that approximates the present progressive. Other particles include:Yan-nhaŋu adjectives may come before or after a noun. They can but are not required to take the grammatical suffix of the noun that they modify. They may also be used as adverbs to modify verbs.Verb transitivity plays an important role in Yan-nhaŋu morphology. If a noun is the subject of a transitive sentence (meaning that the verb has an object) it receives the ergative suffix. The ergative suffix is also used as an instrumental marker to show that a noun is being used by the sentence subject to carry out the transitive action. The subject of an intransitive sentence takes no morpheme ending. Pronouns do not receive ergative suffixes and take no ending as the subject of a transitive sentence. Inanimate objects of transitive verbs do not take a suffix, while humans and many animals take the accusative ending, as do the pronouns representing them.
Further, the flexibility across sentence b and sentence c demonstrates that there is some freedom of word order in the post-verb domain. This freedom is consistent with an analysis in terms of rightwards shifting of the subject, where heavier constituents tend to follow lighter ones. Evidence for this claim comes from the observation that equivalents of sentence c above are not as good with a light subject:
Many languages that have shifted to SVO-word order from the original SOV retain (at least to an extent) the properties, for example the Finnish language (high usage of postpositions etc.)Basque in short sentences, usually, subject or agent–object–verb; in long sentences, usually, subject or agent-verb-objects):
Oromo is a subject pro-drop language. That is, neutral sentences in which the subject is not emphasized do not require independent subject pronouns: "kaleessa dhufne" 'we came yesterday'.
The Oromo word that translates 'we' does not appear in this sentence, though the person and number are marked on the verb "dhufne" ('we came') by the suffix "-ne". When the subject in such sentences needs to be given prominence for some reason, an independent pronoun can be used: "nuti kaleessa dhufne" 'we came yesterday'.
The particle "Kabo" is used to mark that something new is happening. This could mean a change in the situation, a change in the weather etc. An example sentence would be "Ka keno-keno na kabo nabu ye talu". This sentence means 'When we were sleeping, it started to rain.' Notice "kabo" is used because something changed, in this case the weather. Another instance in which "kabo" can be used is to indicate an event that will happen in the future. For example, if someone said, ""Saha kabo ta ginauli"," (meaning 'What are we going to do?') "kabo" is used to imply a change to the current situation. In these examples so far "kabo" was used to mark a change but "kabo" can also be used for a comparison such as '"Maui saliya-na ye loha na kabo Tahali."' That sentence translates to 'Maui is taller than Tahali.' In all of these sentences the particle is actually placed in many different places in the sentence. For example, in the first sentence the particle was placed before the object, while in the second sentence it was placed before the subject. As it turns out the placement of this particle varies and there do not appear to be any specific rules as to where to exactly put kabo in a sentence. All that's known is that it can sometimes go at the very beginning of a sentence before everything else, just before the subject, or after the subject but before the predicate.
Danish basic constituent order in simple sentences with both a subject and an object is Subject-Verb-Object. However, Danish is also a V2 language, which means that the verb must always be the second constituent of the sentence. Following the Danish grammarian Paul Diderichsen Danish grammar tends to be analyzed as consisting of slots or fields, and in which certain types of sentence material can be moved to the pre-verbal (or "grounding") field to achieve different pragmatic effects. Usually the sentence material occupying the preverbal slot has to be pragmatically marked, usually either new information or topics. There is no rule that subjects must occur in the preverbal slot, but since subject and topic often coincide, they often do. Therefore, whenever any sentence material that is not the subject occurs in the preverbal position the subject is demoted to postverbal position and the sentence order becomes VSO.
While English is a subject-prominent language, at the discourse level it tends to use a topic-comment structure, where the known information (topic) precedes the new information (comment). Because of the strict SVO syntax, the topic of a sentence generally has to be the grammatical subject of the sentence. In cases where the topic is not the grammatical subject of the sentence, frequently the topic is promoted to subject position through syntactic means. One way of doing this is through a passive construction, "the girl was stung by the bee". Another way is through a cleft sentence where the main clause is demoted to be a complement clause of a copula sentence with a dummy subject such as "it" or "there", e.g. "it was the girl that the bee stung", "there was a girl who was stung by a bee". Dummy subjects are also used in constructions where there is no grammatical subject such as with impersonal verbs (e.g., "it is raining") or in existential clauses ("there are many cars on the street"). Through the use of these complex sentence constructions with informationally vacuous subjects, English is able to maintain both a topic-comment sentence structure and a SVO syntax.
In linguistic typology, subject–verb–object (SVO) is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant sequence of these elements in unmarked sentences (i.e., sentences in which an unusual word order is not used for emphasis). The label is often used for ergative languages that do not have subjects, but have an agent–verb–object order.
These are sentences which introduce a new subject – they often begin with 'there is' or 'there are' in English.
In Portuguese, the grammatical person of the subject is generally reflected by the inflection of the verb. Sometimes, though an explicit subject is not necessary to form a grammatically correct sentence, one may be stated in order to emphasize its importance. Some sentences, however, do not allow a subject at all and in some other cases an explicit subject would sound awkward or unnatural: