A verb has a subject (the person or thing doing the verb), and may have an object (the thing being done to).
Languages have a variey of positions for the subject, verb and object. English is mostly a subject-verb-object, or SVO language. Consider these two sentences:
| subject | verb | object |
| John | throws | the ball |
| Marie | studies | English |
French is also (mostly) SVO. Consider these sentences:
| subject | verb | object |
| Jean | lance | la balle |
| Marie | étudie | l'anglais |
In French, however, when we replace the object noun ('the ball', or 'anglais' above) with an object pronoun (la, le, l', les), the object pronoun moves to before the verb, making the sentence structure SOV:
| subject | object (pron) | verb | meaning |
| Jean | la | lance | Jean throws it |
| Marie | l' | étudie | Marie studies it |
The subject can be replaced with a subject pronoun too:
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