The reason of syntactic freedom enjoyed by those phrases ['there was a riot, in the village, yesterday'] is not far to seek: in every one of them we find an unambiguous marker of its function, i.e. of its relation to the rest of the utterance: 'there was' marks 'the riot' as the predicate, i.e. as the element around which others gravitate and in relation to which their function will be marked; 'in' marks 'the village' as indicating the place where the riot occurred; 'yesterday', as such, is the indication of when the riot took place. The relationships between the three main elements of experience are thus precisely indicated, and there is no need here to rely on word order to tell the hearers what these relationships are.
- Martinet (1962), a pag.44