A common solution, and one used by Latin, is to mark case.
Languages, like Latin, in which subject, verb, and object can arrive in any order must include some other way of signaling the difference between subjects and objects (to distinguish between John likes Fido and Fido likes John) because the order of words is so unreliable. A common solution, and one used by Latin, is to mark case. Modern English retains case only in a vestigial form, for example, in the difference between she likes dogs and dogs like her. But Latin’s system of cases is much more complex: it uses nominative case for subjects; accusative case for (direct) objects; and many more cases besides (such as dative, genitive, ablative, vocative, and the rarely used locative case). Cases are signaled in Latin with distinct noun endings, but these endings are always vulnerable to conventionalization and simplification (just as a commonly used charade gesture becomes ever simpler).