Still, even in classical Latin, some orders tend to be preferred.
Consider the Romance languages, the family of European languages descended from Latin, which includes Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and Romanian. Classical Latin has a free word order: Audentes fortuna iuvat (fortune favors the brave) works just as well in any of the other five possible orders: Audentes iuvat fortuna, Fortuna audentes iuvat, Fortuna iuvat audentes, Iuvat audentes fortuna, Iuvat fortuna audentes. Still, even in classical Latin, some orders tend to be preferred. The standard version of the phrase is in the OSV order: Audentes(Object) fortuna (Subject) iuvat (Verb); yet the more common pattern in Latin is SOV. So, assuming that this SOV word pattern over time would have become increasingly standardized and entrenched, one might expect that the Romance languages of today would have an SOV word order. But that is not how things turned out. Why?