Each language has, within the semantic structure of its lexicon, a number of generic–specific relationships. Thus, in English, animal is a superordinate term with many hyponyms, including pig and possum. One might hear What animal is that? Oh, it's a pig or A pig is the one sort of animal I can't abide. However, this generic–specific relationship is entirely within the lexicon; it is not, in English, exploited within the syntax of the language. That is, one would not say *I saw an animal pig, where the generic and specific lexemes occur in syntagmatic association, nor *I shot a pig, which animal had been rooting around in the vegetable garden, where the generic term acts as an anaphoric replacement for the specific item.

In some languages, including many from Australia, there is a syntactic association between a word like ‘animal’ and words like ‘pig’ and ‘possum’. This can be manifested in one of two ways: using generic noun plus specifier, or using specific noun plus classifier.

(a) Generic noun and specifier. Speakers prefer to use a generic noun, such as ‘animal’, but will add a specifier, such as ‘pig’, when communicatively appropriate. For instance, a story might begin ‘there was this animal pig’ but then refer to it, at later mentions, just by the generic noun ‘animal’. Or else a story could begin ‘there was this animal’ where it was clear to the hearers, from the context of the speech act, what kind of animal was being referred to. The specifier ‘pig’ might be employed later in the discourse, perhaps to distinguish between this and another kind of animal. (See the examples given under (a) in §3.1.3.)