word order

Example Sentences

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These include word order preferences, such as whether verbs come before or after objects, and hierarchical structures, such as how grammatical relationships are marked within sentences.

From Science Daily • Apr. 5, 2026

The literary term “anastrophe” refers to the technique of reversing word order in a sentence for effect.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 20, 2023

German, she says, is often described as having free word order, but when the same experiment was run in German by another researcher, speakers used the same order more than 75 percent of the time.

From Scientific American • Oct. 18, 2023

Adger taught the study participants different versions of Nápíjò, in which the noun placement in this word order was the opposite of in their native tongue: first for English speakers, last for Thai.

From Slate • Oct. 30, 2019

As we’ll see, a writer must constantly reconcile the two sides of word order: a code for information, and a sequence of mental events.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker