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I just encountered this sentence in a passage, which begins with an adverb and adjective.

Probably blind from birth, he was born into a noble family...

'Probably blind from birth' - What kind of phrase is this?

Jessica Tiberio
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Jane
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    Adjectival phrase modifying the subject pronoun he. – mahmud k pukayoor May 06 '18 at 03:44
  • It's an absolute construction. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_construction . – Greg Lee May 06 '18 at 04:48
  • 'It' is (2) an absolute phrase coming after (1) a pragmatic marker (modal: giving the speaker's assessment of the likelihood of the accuracy of the statement), traditionally known as a sentence adverbial. – Edwin Ashworth May 06 '18 at 05:20
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    It doesn't seem to modify the entire sentence, but only "he". It really doesn't follow the examples of an absolute construction. – Xanne May 06 '18 at 06:32
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    It's not an absolute construction. An absolute is a clause with a subject-predicate structure, but your example is just an adjective phrase. It's best analysed as a predicative adjunct: predicative in that it relates to a predicand, i.e. "he", and an adjunct because it is a optional item in clause structure. Compare the predicative complement equivalent "He was probably blind from birth". – BillJ May 06 '18 at 08:14

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