in japanese, for example, a simple sentence uses sov. in other words, the sentence "robert opens the door" becomes "robert the door opens". such languages often use postpositions, which act like prepositions but appear after content words rather than before them, to show the role of a word in the sentence. the sample sentence "robert opens the door" would be in japanese ロバートはドアを開ける "robāto-wa doa-o akeru" in which は "wa" as in ロバートは "robāto-wa" shows that ロバート "robāto (robert)" is the topic of the sentence, and を "o" as in ドアを "doa-o" shows that ドア "doa" is the direct object of the sentence. around 45% of all languages are sov languages.