In languages such as English and German, word order is used as a means of turning declarative into interrogative sentences: A: 'Wen liebt Kate?' / 'Kate liebt wen?' [Whom does Kate love? / Kate loves whom?] (OVS/SVO) B: 'Sie liebt Mark' / 'Mark ist der, den sie liebt' [She loves Mark / It is Mark whom she loves.] (SVO/OSV) C: 'Liebt Kate Mark?' [Does Kate love Mark?] (VSO) In (A), the first sentence shows the word order used for wh-questions in English and German. The second sentence is an echo question; it would only be uttered after receiving an unsatisfactory or confusing answer to a question. One could replace the word wen [whom] (which indicates that this sentence is a question) with an identifier such as Mark: 'Kate liebt Mark?' [Kate loves Mark?]. In that case, since no change in word order occurs, it is only by means of stress and tone that we are able to identify the sentence as a question. In (B), the first sentence is declarative and provides an answer to the first question in (A). The second sentence emphasizes that Kate does indeed love Mark, and not whomever else we might have assumed her to love. However, a sentence this verbose is unlikely to occur in everyday speech (or even in written language), be it in English or in German. Instead, one would most likely answer the echo question in (A) simply by restating: Mark!. This is the same for both languages. In yes–no questions such as (C), English and German use subject-verb inversion. But, whereas English relies on do-support to form questions from verbs other than auxiliaries, German has no such restriction and uses inversion to form questions, even from lexical verbs. Despite this, English, as opposed to German, has very strict word order. In German, word order can be used as a means to emphasize a constituent in an independent clause by moving it to the beginning of the sentence. This is a defining characteristic of German as a V2 (verb-second) language, where, in independent clauses, the finite verb always comes second and is preceded by one and only one constituent. In closed questions, V1 (verb-first) word order is used. And lastly, dependent clauses use verb-final word order. However, German cannot be called an SVO language since no actual constraints are imposed on the placement of the subject and object(s), even though a