raffadalbo:

orthohawk:SVO order is nowhere near Anglocentric. It is used in all the Romance languages, in addition to Finnish, Estonian, Arabic, Berber, Hausa, Javanese, Cambodian/Khmer, Vietnamese, Yoruba, and practically all Creole languages.

I think this is not true. Arabic, as far as I know, very often uses VSO.

And what about questions? In English or French, questions require that subject is moved after the verb (so VSO is a question), but in Italian this does not occur (questions are usually SVO like positive sentences).

Additionally, even in VSO languages and in positive sentences, the sentences where the order is changed and their emphasys value are not the same. For instance, in Italian sentences like "Nobody came" start normally with the verb ("Non è venuto nessuno" ).

I think that free order in Esperanto is very useful and emphasys should not be given too much importance. Esperanto aims to be an easy language, so it must "pay" some small price for adjusting to different native languages. Emphasys may be misrepresented, but the main content is always clear.

Example: "Neniu venis" and "Venis neniu" agree with English and Italian order, respectively. A native English speaker and a native Italian speaker, especially if not very skilled in Esperanto, may associate different emphasys values to the two sentences, but the main meaning is clear for both in both sentences.

Actually all th Arabic dialects (the language spoken by the people in the streets) IS SVO.
As to your "what about questions?" statement, typology is determined by what order declarative, non-emphasis sentences use, so it is irrelevant (to this issue) that English, French and others may invert the verb and subject in questions.

Choice of order is not just a matter of emphasis. It is sometime used to make a sentence more intelligible.

1. Venis neniu, kiu povis prezenti al la Reĝo taŭgan solvon de la problemo
2. Neniu, kiu povis prezenti al la Reĝo taŭgan solvon de la problemo, venis.