Theme first: languages prefer placing the theme before the rheme; and the subject typically carries the role of the theme; therefore, most languages have subject before object in their basic word order.[1] Animated first: similarly, since subjects are more likely to be animate, they are more likely to precede the object.[15] Given before new: old information comes before new information.[16] First things first: more important or more urgent information comes before other information.[16] Lightness: light (short) constituents are ordered before heavy (long) constituents.[17] Uniformity: word order choices are generalised.[17] For example, languages tend to have either prepositions or postpositions; and not both equally. Functional load: elements within a linguistic sub-system are made distinct to avoid confusion.