Imagine making a sandwich with different layers – you have the subject, the verb, and the object. Now, think about how people prefer to arrange these layers in different languages. Previous research has looked at how certain factors like salience and animacy can influence word order preferences. In this study, the researchers wanted to see if iconic gestures and prior knowledge of a conventional lexicon would also impact these preferences. What they found was that while iconicity did not seem to play a role, learning a lexicon did lead to a stronger preference for a specific word order. Additionally, they compared English speakers (who tend to use SVO order) with Turkish speakers (who tend to use SOV order) and discovered that language background and event type influenced participants’ ordering preferences. These findings support the idea that word order is not fixed, but rather responds to various influences. If you want to dive deeper into this fascinating research and explore the interplay between language and cognition, check out the full article!

Abstract
Of the six possible orderings of the three main constituents of language (subject, verb, and object), two—SOV and SVO—are predominant cross-linguistically. Previous research using the silent gesture paradigm in which hearing participants produce or respond to gestures without speech has shown that different factors such as reversibility, salience, and animacy can affect the preferences for different orders. Here, we test whether participants’ preferences for orders that are conditioned on the semantics of the event change depending on (i) the iconicity of individual gestural elements and (ii) the prior knowledge of a conventional lexicon. Our findings demonstrate the same preference for semantically conditioned word order found in previous studies, specifically that SOV and SVO are preferred differentially for different types of events. We do not find that iconicity of individual gestures affects participants’ ordering preferences; however, we do find that learning a lexicon leads to a stronger preference for SVO-like orders overall. Finally, we compare our findings from English speakers, using an SVO-dominant language, with data from speakers of an SOV-dominant language, Turkish. We find that, while learning a lexicon leads to an increase in SVO preference for both sets of participants, this effect is mediated by language background and event type, suggesting that an interplay of factors together determines preferences for different ordering patterns. Taken together, our results support a view of word order as a gradient phenomenon responding to multiple biases.

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