---
title: "Types of Attributive Constructions in Middle English Poetry (2025)"
description: "The paper looks at how Geoffrey Chaucer builds noun phrases with modifiers in The Canterbury Tales . 8 references."
authors: ["E. A. Nilsen", "I. K. Mashko"]
year: 2025
venue: "Discourse 11 (Дискурс 11)"
source: "https://discourse.elpub.ru/jour/article/view/788"
doi: "10.32603/2412-8562-2025-11-2-157-169"
licence: "CC BY"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/nilsen-2025-types-attributive-constructions-middle-english/"
---
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# Types of Attributive Constructions in Middle English Poetry

**Authors:** E. A. Nilsen and I. K. Mashko · **Year:** 2025 · **Venue:** [Discourse 11 (Дискурс 11)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/discourse/) ([Discourse 2025](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/discourse/2025/)) · **Licence:** [CC BY](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.32603/2412-8562-2025-11-2-157-169) · [PDF](https://discourse.elpub.ru/jour/article/download/788/724) · [DOI 10.32603/2412-8562-2025-11-2-157-169](https://doi.org/10.32603/2412-8562-2025-11-2-157-169) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W4409798654)

**Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The paper looks at how Geoffrey Chaucer builds noun phrases with modifiers in *The Canterbury Tales*. Its aim is to classify the attributive constructions typical of Middle English verse and describe their peculiarities. The authors examined a 6,105-word stretch of the original text, which judging by the cited source is the General Prologue, alongside the modern English adaptation on Harvard's Geoffrey Chaucer Website. They extracted every attributive construction by continuous sampling, sorted them using V. L. Kaushanskaya's grammar-based classification, and then counted each type's share.

The result is 396 unique constructions. Adjectival modifiers are the most common at 37%. Possessives or genitive nouns and prepositional groups follow, and together these three types make up 82% of the set. Most attributes stand before their head word (70%). The authors also identify "exceptions" in which Chaucer places the attribute on the side opposite to modern usage, and the modern adaptation then moves it back. They read this as evidence of an unstable, transitional grammar, further shaped by the constraints of verse.

## Key points
- The source is a 6,105-word fragment of Chaucer's *The Canterbury Tales*, compared against a modern rendering from Harvard's Geoffrey Chaucer Website.
- Continuous sampling produced 396 unique attributive constructions, which were classified with V. L. Kaushanskaya's scheme in a morphological approach.
- Adjective attributes make up 37%. Nominative-noun attributes and numeral attributes are each about 1%.
- Adjective, possessive/genitive and prepositional-group attributes together account for 82% of all constructions.
- About 70% of attributes come before the head. The English abstract calls this "prepositional", but the Russian text means *prepositive*. A small set of order-reversed "exceptions" is listed, such as fronted *of*-phrases like "of his harm the roote".

## Interesting ideas
- The authors line up an old text with its modern adaptation and treat every case where the modifier moves to the other side of the head as a marked "exception", which is a cheap way to find word-order drift without hand-built rules.
- They profile a text by the share of each modifier type (adjective, genitive, prepositional group, numeral), turning a grammatical inventory into a compact stylistic fingerprint.
- They separate the form of the attribute (which part of speech) from its position (before or after the head) and analyse the two axes independently.
- They treat the modern adaptation as a normalising pivot, where the reordered version reveals the intended head and modifier.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (tree): Aligning archaic or poetic English with modern paraphrases could surface inversion patterns, such as fronted *of*-phrases, that the parser should attach correctly, giving targeted test cases for gparse and the perceptron parser.
- **I2** (learn): Comparing modifier-type distributions in silver trees against a reference genre profile could serve as a sanity check that flags parsers whose `amod`/`nmod`/`nmod:poss` rates drift unnaturally.
- **I3** (frames): Storing modifier category and linear position as separate features would let property-assignment logic attach qualities to entities correctly even when verse or archaic order flips the usual arrangement.
- **I4** (back): The same old-to-modern pairs could test the text → graph → text path, by checking that one meaning graph generates a natural modern word order from inverted input.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

Also on the byline: [Saint Petersburg State University of Economics](https://ror.org/0398ex766).

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## Cite

Cite as: E. A. Nilsen and I. K. Mashko. 2025. Types of Attributive Constructions in Middle English Poetry. Discourse 11 (Дискурс 11).

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{nilsen2025types,
  title = {{Types of Attributive Constructions in Middle English Poetry}},
  author = {E. A. Nilsen and I. K. Mashko},
  booktitle = {Discourse 11 (Дискурс 11)},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.32603/2412-8562-2025-11-2-157-169},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.32603/2412-8562-2025-11-2-157-169}
}
```

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## References

8 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Arakin, V.D. (2005), Sravnitel'naya tipologiya angliiskogo i russkogo yazykov [Comparative typology of English and Russian languages], 3rd ed., Fizmatlit, Moscow, RUS. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Arakin%2C+V%2ED%2E+%282005%29%2C+Sravnitel%27naya+tipologiya+angliiskogo+i+russkogo+yazykov+%5BComparative+typology+of+English+and+Russian+languages%5D%2C+3rd+ed%2E%2C+Fizmatlit%2C+Moscow%2C+RUS%2E)
2. Kirillova, E.B. (2017), “Attributive constructions as one of the most widespread types of free word combinations in modern English. The main methods of their translation into Russian”, The main problems of the humanities, Collection of Scientific Papers on the Results of the int. Scientific-Practical Conf., Volgograd, RUS, pp. 26–29. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Kirillova%2C+E%2EB%2E+%282017%29%2C+%E2%80%9CAttributive+constructions+as+one+of+the+most+widespread+types+of+free+word+combinations+in+modern+English%2E+The+main+methods+of+their+translation+into+Russian%E2%80%9D%2C+The+main+proble)
3. Kazakovtseva, O.S. (2020), “The location of the components of the attributive phrase in the Old Russian monuments of the XI-XIII centuries (on the material of the texts of the epistolary genre and the Old Russian eloquent)”, Abstract of Can. Sci. (Philology) dissertation, PetrSU, Petrozavodsk, RUS. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Kazakovtseva%2C+O%2ES%2E+%282020%29%2C+%E2%80%9CThe+location+of+the+components+of+the+attributive+phrase+in+the+Old+Russian+monuments+of+the+XI%2DXIII+centuries+%28on+the+material+of+the+texts+of+the+epistolary+genre+and+the)
4. Yartseva, V.N. (1990), Lingvisticheskii entsiklopedicheskii slovar' [Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary], Sov. entsiklopediya, Moscow, USSR. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Yartseva%2C+V%2EN%2E+%281990%29%2C+Lingvisticheskii+entsiklopedicheskii+slovar%27+%5BLinguistic+encyclopedic+dictionary%5D%2C+Sov%2E+entsiklopediya%2C+Moscow%2C+USSR%2E)
5. Sinkevich, D.A. (2010), “Attributive constructions in modern linguistics: problems of definition and analysis”, Aktual'nye voprosy sovremennoi nauki [Actual issues of modern science], no. 12, pp. 239–248. Типы атрибутивных конструкций в среднеанглийской поэзии Types of Attributive Constructions in Middle English Poetry Языкознание Linguistics ДИСКУРС. 2025. Т. 11, № 2. C. 157–169 DISCOURSE. 2025, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 157–169 [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Sinkevich%2C+D%2EA%2E+%282010%29%2C+%E2%80%9CAttributive+constructions+in+modern+linguistics%3A+problems+of+definition+and+analysis%E2%80%9D%2C+Aktual%27nye+voprosy+sovremennoi+nauki+%5BActual+issues+of+modern+science%5D%2C+no%2E+12%2C+pp%2E+239%E2%80%93)
6. Tkachenko, A.V. (2020), “Attributive word combinations from the viewpoints of traditional and cognitive approaches (by the material of the English language)”, Philology. Theory & Practice, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 80–86. DOI: 10.30853/filnauki.2020.4.17 7. Proskura, Yu.V. (2006), “Attributive constructions in the German language: cognitive and functional aspects”, Abstract of Can. Sci. (Philology) dissertation, KuzSPA, Novokuznetsk, RUS. [↗](https://doi.org/10.30853/filnauki.2020.4.17)
7. Ivanova, I.P., Burlakova, V.V. and Pocheptsov, G.G. (1981), Teoreticheskaya grammatika sovremennogo angliiskogo yazyka [Theoretical Grammar of Modern English], Vyssh. shkola, Мoscow, USSR. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Ivanova%2C+I%2EP%2E%2C+Burlakova%2C+V%2EV%2E+and+Pocheptsov%2C+G%2EG%2E+%281981%29%2C+Teoreticheskaya+grammatika+sovremennogo+angliiskogo+yazyka+%5BTheoretical+Grammar+of+Modern+English%5D%2C+Vyssh%2E+shkola%2C+%D0%9Coscow%2C+USSR%2E)
8. Kaushanskaya, V.L., Kovner, R.L., Kozhevnikova, O.N. et al. (2008), [A Grammar of the English Language, Airis Press, Moscow, RUS](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/nilsen-2025-types-attributive-constructions-middle-english/). 10. “Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website”, Harvard Univ., available at: [https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/general-prologue-0](https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/general-prologue-0) (accessed 19.08.2024). Information about the authors. Evgeniia A. Nilsen – Dr. Sci. (Philology, 2015), Professor (2016), Head of the Department of English Philology and Translation, Saint Petersburg State Economic University, 30–32 Griboyedov Canal emb., letter A, St Petersburg 191023, Russia. The author of 225 scientific publications. Area of expertise: semantics, diachronic linguoconceptology, cognitive linguistics, lexicology, history of the English language. Ignatiy K. Mashko – Postgraduate at the Department of English Philology and Translation, Saint Petersburg State Economic University, 30–32 Griboyedov Canal emb., letter A, St Petersburg 191023, Russia. The author of 10 scientific publications. Area of expertise: semantics, cognitive linguistics, lexicology, diachronic analyses of poetic texts. No conflicts of interest related to this publication were reported. Received 17.12.2024; adopted after review 28.01.2025; published online 21.04.2025. Типы атрибутивных конструкций в среднеанглийской поэзии Types of Attributive Constructions in Middle English Poetry [↗](https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/general-prologue-0)

*Updated 29 October 2026*