Verb-initial word order to derive the structures of verb-initial languages from underlyingly SVO structures, functional linguists would look at how cognitive principles make it possible for languages to have different word orders and why certain word orders are more common, less common, or almost non-existent. Russell Tomlin (in his 1986 paper "Basic word order. Functional principles") argued that there are three cognitively grounded principles which can account for the observed distributions of the frequencies of word order in human languages. The three principles are: Since subjects are generally more likely than objects to be topics and to have animate referents, the topic-first principle
Latin word order approval: He notes that the sentence would be ruined rhythmically if the word order of the last three words were changed to "comprobavit fili temeritas". What was apparently admired here was the clausula of "comprobavit" with its double trochaic – u – – rhythm; whereas "temeritas" would make a rhythm of u u u –, which Cicero says would produce an unsatisfying effect in Latin, despite being recommended by Aristotle. The 1st-century A.D. teacher of oratory, Quintilian, remarks that hyperbaton (switching words round) is often used to make a sentence more euphonious. He gives the example of the following sentence