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The aim of this paper is to highlight the diffrences between the so-called general vs. unspecified nouns through the so-called general human nouns (man, individual, person, ...) generally left out of the debate. We compare these three nominal subcategories on the basis of criteria that are rarely used in the literature concerning them: in addition to usage and frequency, we differentiate them on the basis of their degree of abstraction, the semantic variations they manifest according to discourse genres and their discursive functions, and according to their potential for construction and grammaticalization. We thus show that only certain uses of these names, whether they are NHG, NG or Nss, "act as" NG, Nss, etc., and that they are not used in the same way as NG, NG or Nss.

In this study, we put forward two constraints which limit the use of the predicative demonstrative NP (PDNP) i.e. conveying new information, compared to that given by its antecedent and/or the context. The first concerns the relation between the anaphoric SN and its source, which is « predicational » (in the sense of Van Peteghem, 1991) and whose SN attribute (of N2+modifier form) returns to a class of inherent properties and where the modifier justifies the partition implied by the demonstrative. The second series of constraints takes into account the role of the definite vs indefinite determinant of the antecedent of the PDNP, which limits the informational content. Actually, two principles control it: 1) a principle of relevance which explains why not « stereotyped » information can be accessible ; 2) a principle of coherence, in particular relation of causality between the PDNP and its predicate.