Lehmann (1992): 'Apparently, the basis for the shift is ease in understanding.'

Atzo ikusten genuén nóla Dryer-ek (2011) ematen zuen argudio kualitatibo bat (SOV is much more common in small language families) ...

... suggesting that there was a time a few thousand years ago when SOV was by far the most common word order in the world [Dryer, 2011]

eta hori ikusita, gogoratu gara kin beste argudio kualitatibo bat zein Lehmann hizkuntzalariak eman zuén jada an 1992, eta zein guk jasotzen genuén an sarrera titulatzén "Lehmann: the evidence of widely spoken languages" (2007), ... 

... , non Lehmann-ek dun egiten bereizketa kualitatibo bat arten hizkuntzak zein asko zabaldu diren zehar mundua, eta hizkuntzak zein gutxi zabaldu diren zehar mundua. Ikus dezagun:

The first has to do with adoption of a language by non-native speakers. When large numbers of non-native speakers adopt a language, the language tend to be shifted to SVO structure. Apparently, the basis for the shift is ease in understanding. In both VSO and SOV languages the two frequent nominal constituents of sentences, subject and object, stand side by side. In SVO languages, by contrast, they are clearly separated by the verb. We may note that all widely used languages with more than 100 million speakers today have become SVO. A number of these are Indo-European: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish. Another example is Chinese, which apparently in an early stage was verb final. The last major language to change towards SVO structure is Arabic, which is increasingly assuming SVO characteristics. An apparent counterexample is Japanese; but it has not been adopted by large numbers of speakers outside Japan. The evidence of widely spoken languages, then, supports the hypothesis that they tend towards SVO structure. If the basic sentence pattern is changed, the remaining constructions gradually change as well, as we have observed above. [249. or.]

Gorago, eta mintzatuz burúz eboluzioa hon hizkuntza indoeuroparra, esan du:

Similarly, prepositions were introduced, many of them from previous postpositions. [249. or.]

Euskaran ahal dugu erraztu prozesua edo zaildu. Da gure aukera. [Balbula, 2007]

Amaitzeko soilik nabarmendú ze Lehmann mintzo da buruz azalpen funtzional explizitu bat: "ease in understanding". [⇶]