prepositional phrase between subject and verb?

[dihen]

_

[Johan[@CLT]]

I do not think that there is anything wrong with these sentences, besides the word order ... I have never heard anyone saying something like this.
Are these being used by native speakers ? But as far as prepositions are concerned, it is perfect.

Kind Regards

[dihen]

_

[Tdol]

English word order is not very flexible- words don't agree, so we generally keep words that go together close together. If you start mixing things up, then the sense is lost.

[Johan[@CLT]]

Dihen,

I'm with tdol here, I'm sorry to say but the majority of the example sentences you have written do not make any sense due to the word order.

I'm a native Dutch speaker (Flemish) and the major rule for all Dutch speaking people is that we have to step away from Dutch, we have to think "English" which means that we have to pay attention to the word order.

Kind regards

[dihen]

How come this one seems to be correct?
`
I was at home reading a book.
`
But these below sound a little strange, so are they wrong?
`
I was at home reading a book yesterday.
I was at home yesterday reading a book.
`
This one sounds even more strange.
`
I was yesterday at home reading a book.

[Johan[@CLT]]

Dihen,

The first sentence "I was at home reading a book" is perfect. You may also say " I was reading a book at home". But the first sentence stresses the fact that you were home. So, you might say something like this when you are talking to a policeman when I has asked what you were doing at a certain time. It is not necessarly bound to the situation that I have just given you. It is only an example, you can use this sentence in every context as far as I'm concerned.

The other two sentences do sound a little bit awkard indeed. Besides the word order there is nothing wrong with them.
One of the rules in the English language says that the best place for a time indication (Yesterday) is at the beginning or at the end of the sentence. And you will see and hear that the sentence sounds much better, it sounds much more "English"

1 -> Yesterday, I was at home reading a book.
2 -> Yesterday, I was reading a book at home.
3 -> I was reading a book at home yesterday.

When you make a sentence with an indication of place and time, the best thing you can do is to put the indication of place just before the indication time. So, like in example sentence 3.


The last sentence sounds really strange indeed, it's a good thing that you point it out yourself. The time indication "yesterday" is not where it supposed be You are free to put it at the beginning or at the very end of the sentence and that is it perfectly fine

Interesting topic this is !

Kind Regards

Johan

[dihen]

Do these also sound strange?
`
"I will on the way visit my friends."
"I will visit on the way my friends."
`
"I saw him yesterday, at the park." (unacceptable unless "at the park" is an afterthought [here marked with a comma]?)