By contrast, dogs like Mary has dogs as the subject and Mary as the object of their affection.
How do these twin forces, of conventionalization for conveying familiar messages and of creative bending and rebuilding conventions to deal with unfamiliar messages, play out in language? To start with, consider one of the most basic aspects of any language: word order. In English, the word order Mary likes dogs tell us that Mary is the subject of the verb (she is the “liker”) and that dogs are the object (they are the “liked”). By contrast, dogs like Mary has dogs as the subject and Mary as the object of their affection. In English, then, the standard word order is Subject–Verb–Object (SVO).