Fronted adverbials

Earlier today, I discovered fronted adverbials. "Earlier today" is one.

Sadly (another, I think), fronted adverbials is a term I had never heard of in my long life. Suddenly (enough now, I think), I came across it in a comment column by Alice Thomson in the Times. Obviously better educated than me, one of Alice's claims to fame is that the city of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia - an almost unbearably hot desert city, I can attest to that - was named after the wife of her ancestor Sir Charles Todd. So better connected than me too.

According to learningstreet.co.uk "Teachers will introduce children to fronted adverbials from Year 4 onwards". What? I'm first hearing this in Year 78! Maybe they hadn't been invented when I was at school.

Charles Todd was Superintendent of Telegraphs of South Australia when it was decided to build a telegraph line from Port Augusta to Darwin independent of the other colonies, and work began in September 1870. The Overland Telegraph Line was one of the greatest civil engineering feats in the history of Australia. There's a monument to it, and him:

It stands 50 miles south of Daly Waters, at the point where the northerly and southerly sections of the Line were joined in 1872. In 2007 I traversed this route on a wonderful train called the Ghan

stopping at Alice Springs for a few hours on the way. Here's one of the Alice locals I met:

The indigenous people who have native title to Daly Waters and its surrounds are the Jingili. They traditionally spoke a language called Jinguli, although a survey in 1997 found that only between 10 and 15 people still understood it.

Jinguli typically uses verbless clauses. So they probably haven't heard of frontal adverbials either. That makes me feel better.