Adnominal Adverbs in Japanese

Perhaps Japanese linguistics literature calls it by a different name but by adnominal adverbs I mean a construction wherein the main verb or the sentence as a whole is modified by an adnominal modifier to a noun in the sentence. How abominable and twisted! An example is;

小耳にはさんだ
komimi-ni hasanda
smallEar-LOC holdPast
I just happened to hear that (...)

A literal translation of the expression is, "I've held in the small ear that." Just in case an idiomatic expression confuses the reader, mimi-ni hasamu (to hold in the ear) is a Japanese expression meaning "to hear a rumor or news."

Now, the ko- (small) which is a prefix modifies the noun to create "small ear" but in this construction is used as a modifier to the whole sentence or the verb. That is to say, it means that the way the action of knowing the news is small; casual, slight, unintentional or fragmentary information.

Until yesterday I thought adnominal adverbs were a small set of idiomatic expressions with affixes (小首をかしげる, ご飯ばかり食べる etc.). This, however, seems not to be the case. The following adnominal adverb is made by the genitive marker no- and the construction looks rather productive:

観念の眼を閉じる
kannen-no manako-o todžiru
resignation-GEN eye-ACC close
close one's eyes in resignation

This blog entry does not have a conclusion but is a small note of what occurred to me like a sunrise in the desert.