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VSO languages are few and hard to find. The few I know of all switch to VOS order in copular sentences. Is this universal or are there exceptions? Do humans really dislike de-coupling V and O so much they refuse to do so in all circumstances?

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  • Not an answer, but humans really do dislike decoupling V and O. According to many syntacticians, that's because O is an argument of V, and S is not. So O and V are always more closely linked in the underlying structure, and some movement has to happen to end up with S in between them.
    – Draconis ♦
    Commented Feb 11 at 20:48
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    Welsh has a fairly free word order, allowing a variety of elements to be fronted, but the base word order in ascriptive copular clauses is non-fronted VSO (whereas in identificatory copular clauses, the base order is SVO, with the subject fronted). Oddly, the opposite is true of Irish, where classificatory (= ascriptive) copular clauses have VOS, while identificatory copular clauses retain VSO. So neither splits verb and subject predicate in all circumstances, but both do it in some circumstances.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Feb 11 at 23:17

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