Spanish Word Order (was Re: "Free" word order (was Re: Greek definite article (was Re: Addendum: a holy spirit)))

>
>I recall similar things from Spanish grammar: Juan tosó ~Tosó Juan, and am
>no longer sure whether there's any difference. And something similar in
>Engl. in writing dialogue:
>
>John said (?*Said John), "blah blah." vs.
>"Blah blah" said John ~John said.
>
>
Spanish word order... I'm sure there's a pattern, and I place things
intuitively in certain places (Spanish is an L2 not an L1 for me), but
I'm not entirely sure of the rules governing where you place things on a
conscious level. Thinking about it though there are really only three
common orders in normal speech (or I think there are.. bear in mind it's
an L2):

SVO
VSO
VOS (more common when S is a pronoun such as "yo")

That's in order of commonality... or my impression anyway. You
definately don't normally get SOV.... I suppose you could classify
constructions such as

a Juan le gusta X

as OVS, but this is really dative-intransitive rather than a transitive
clause. When talking about word orders btw I'm excluding the clitics
before the verb such as me, te etc.... if you count them then SOV is
common, but this doesn't often occur when the O is a full NP.
Of course, when it comes to songs and poetry I dare say you can find
every possible word order.