Generic anaphora in text : a corpus-based study of Norwegian

This paper examines generic anaphora in Norwegian. The study is corpus-based and consists of an analysis of 170 generic texts retrieved from an online encyclopaedia Store norske leksikon. The texts were divided into five thematical categories: people, animals, plants, tools and other. The analysis focuses both on generic nouns in each of the texts, as well as anaphoric references in them. Generic anaphora can be expressed with the use of pronouns as well as nouns that are synonymous to the main noun in each of the texts (e.g. “animal” as an anaphoric reference to “dog” etc.). The study shows that in the texts, the forms of anaphoric expressions were often in accordance with noun forms used throughout the text. What is more, the type of nouns influenced the choice of a given noun form or a pronoun in anaphoric expressions. For instance, animals considered gregarious and plants that seem uncountable appeared in definite plural form (e.g. ‘the mosses’ and ‘the plants’ for the anaphoric reference).