> Of the Germanic languages, English and the Scandinavian languages
are SVO, and German and Dutch (partially) SOV
I am puzzled by the claim that German is SOV. I take it you are referring
to modern German, where the verb must be the second idea in the sentence.
Since the subject normally comes first (although it need not), this seems to
me to make it a SVO language.
The verb appears at the end in subordinate clauses, but why should we
classify a language on the basis of its subordinate clauses, rather than its
main clauses?
Peter