Abstract
The basic word order in the Serbo-Croatian language is absolutely not rigid when words are marked in nominative and accusative cases, since it indicates the role of the words. However, in rare cases when it is unmarked, because of the inflectional type of this language, SVO (Subject, Verb, and Object) seems to be the more frequent order of this language in neutral contexts. It could be argued that the more a sentence is expressive and the more words are marked, the freer the word order is. It can be SVO, OVS, VSO and SOV. It depends on the emphasis people want to create when talking or writing. The emphasized word is usually placed at the beginning of the sentence and is followed by the verb. In narrative clauses, when inversion occurs, which means when the verb is placed before the subject, it has a stylistic or rhythmic purpose. These orders mainly occur when accusative and nominative markers can identify the nature of the words. This reordering is done because of the inflectional type of this language, in which words are marked most of the time, according to their genre, number, and grammatical category.
