Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

An idea can usually be augmented a bit with an adverbial phrase:

A first child , she had learnt to be responsible from a young age.
Unique among mammals , the uterolact mouse feeds her fetuses from tiny internal glands.

But more often, the adverbial thing appears to be just  an extra piece of information piggy backing on another, perhaps as a stylistic affectation:

Married to a doctor, Hernez was an early admirer of the Revolution.
A distant cousin to the house lizard, polar bats can be spotted in vast migrations across Antarctica.

Do you see that as one of the common-strange things with English ?   This type of faux attribution  never quits stopping me short.