The Functions of General Nouns

The author critically discusses the concept of general nouns, which Halliday/Hasan introduced in their approach to lexical cohesion (1976), and she provides a comprehensive overview of these nouns from a micro- and a macro-linguistic perspective. For the empirical analysis, the author compiled a corpus, which allows statements about a medium- and genre-specific use of general nouns. For this purpose, she developed an analytical tool, which takes into account formal and semantic features. The major outcome of the corpus analysis is that general nouns are much more flexible in form and function than Halliday/Hasan assumed and, most importantly, that they fulfil genre-specific functions some of which have not systematically been associated with lexical cohesion.