Word order

§ 1. Word order in English is of much greater importance than in Russian. Due to the wealth of inflexions word order in Russian is rather free as the inflexions show the function of each Word in a sentence. As English words have hardly any inflexions and their relation to each other is shown by their place in the sentence and not by their form, word order in English is fixed. We cannot change the position of different parts of the sentence at will, especially that of the subject and the object.

To illustrate this we Shall try to change the order of words in the following sentence.

Mrs. Winter sent the little boy with a message to the next village one

December day. (Hardy)

If we put the direct object in the first place and the subject in the third, the meaning of the sentence will change altogether because the object, being placed at the head of the sentence, becomes the subject and the subject, being placed after the predicate, becomes the object.

The little boy sent Mrs. Winter with a message to the next village one

December day.

In Russian such changes of word order are in most cases possible.

Моя сестра видела замечательный фильм в Москве.

Замечательный фильм видела моя сестра в Москве.

So due to the absence of case distinctions word order is practically the only means of distinguishing between the subject and the direct object.

The above sentence may serve as an example of direct word order in an English declarative sentence:

(1) the subject;

(2) the predicate;

(3) objects;

(4) adverbial modifiers.