The frequency of basic constituent orders

This paper describes the production of an empirically valid and statistically sound sample of the world's languages, which is used to determine the frequency of each of the six mathematically possible orders of the basic constituents S, V, and O. Using the Kolmogrov test as a test of goodness‐of‐fit, a sample of 402 languages is created which shows genetic and areal similarity to a standard produced using the Voegelin and Voegelin (1977) reference work. Unlike the results of previous convenience samples, a frequency analysis of this sample reveals the following relative frequencies of basic order types: SOV = SVO VSO VOS = OVS OSV. It is argued that greater care is needed in the production of language samples for typological studies.