Free word order: What order?
Using morphological means to express relations between words in a sentence considerably frees the order the words must appear.
It is true that some orders feel more natural for a sentence,
and Subject-Verb-Object is predominant in neutral everyday sentences,
but a sentence is perfectly understandable even if the word order is absolutely wrong.
If grammatical relations are signalled by suffixes,
the position of words in the sentence is not important,
but if there are no case endings available,
the only means of indicating these relations is word order.
This is why English has a rigid word order,
but Estonian a free one.
The canonical example used by teachers is a sentence,
consisting of four words tihti [often] taevas [in the sky] tähti [stars] nähti [were seen],
where all combinations are equally possible and there are several candidates for the 'most comfortable' word order.
Nähti taevas tihti tähti
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Nähti taevas tähti tihti
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Nähti tihti taevas tähti
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Nähti tihti tähti taevas
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Nähti tähti taevas tihti
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Nähti tähti tihti taevas
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Taevas nähti tihti tähti
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Taevas nähti tähti tihti
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Taevas tihti nähti tähti
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Taevas tihti tähti nähti
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Taevas tähti nähti tihti
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Taevas tähti tihti nähti
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Tihti nähti taevas tähti
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Tihti nähti tähti taevas
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Tihti taevas nähti tähti
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Tihti taevas tähti nähti
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Tihti tähti nähti taevas
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Tihti tähti taevas nähti
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Tähti nähti taevas tihti
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Tähti nähti tihti taevas
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Tähti taevas nähti tihti
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Tähti taevas tihti nähti
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Tähti tihti nähti taevas
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Tähti tihti taevas nähti
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