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        <title>A is for a-generics: Predicate Collectivity in Generic Constructions</title>
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            <namePart type="given">Melissa</namePart>
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    <abstract>Generic statements like *A dog has four legs* are central to encode general knowledge. Yet their form–meaning mapping remains elusive. Some predicates sound natural with indefinite singulars (*a*-generics), while others require the definite article (*the*-generics) or the bare plural (bare-plural generics). For instance, why do we say *The computer revolutionized education* but not *A computer revolutionized education*? We propose a construction-based account explaining why not all generic statements are created equal. Prior accounts invoke semantic notions like kind-reference, stage-levelness, or accidental generalization, but offer no unified explanation. This paper introduces a new explanatory dimension: predicate collectivity level, i.e. whether the predicate applies to each member of a group or to the whole group as a unit (without necessarily applying to each of its members individually). Using two preregistered acceptability experiments we show that *a*-generics, unlike *the*-generics and bare-plural generics, are dispreferred with collective predicates. The findings offer a functionally motivated, empirically supported account of morphosyntactic variation in genericity, providing a new entry point for Construction Grammar.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T A is for a-generics: Predicate Collectivity in Generic Constructions
%A Cascino, Carlotta Marianna
%Y Bonial, Claire
%Y Torgbi, Melissa
%Y Weissweiler, Leonie
%Y Blodgett, Austin
%Y Beuls, Katrien
%Y Van Eecke, Paul
%Y Tayyar Madabushi, Harish
%S Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Construction Grammars and NLP
%D 2025
%8 September
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Düsseldorf, Germany
%@ 979-8-89176-318-0
%F cascino-2025-generics
%X Generic statements like *A dog has four legs* are central to encode general knowledge. Yet their form–meaning mapping remains elusive. Some predicates sound natural with indefinite singulars (*a*-generics), while others require the definite article (*the*-generics) or the bare plural (bare-plural generics). For instance, why do we say *The computer revolutionized education* but not *A computer revolutionized education*? We propose a construction-based account explaining why not all generic statements are created equal. Prior accounts invoke semantic notions like kind-reference, stage-levelness, or accidental generalization, but offer no unified explanation. This paper introduces a new explanatory dimension: predicate collectivity level, i.e. whether the predicate applies to each member of a group or to the whole group as a unit (without necessarily applying to each of its members individually). Using two preregistered acceptability experiments we show that *a*-generics, unlike *the*-generics and bare-plural generics, are dispreferred with collective predicates. The findings offer a functionally motivated, empirically supported account of morphosyntactic variation in genericity, providing a new entry point for Construction Grammar.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2025.cxgsnlp-1.11/
%P 109-119

Markdown (Informal)

[A is for a-generics: Predicate Collectivity in Generic Constructions](https://aclanthology.org/2025.cxgsnlp-1.11/) (Cascino, CxGsNLP 2025)

• A is for a-generics: Predicate Collectivity in Generic Constructions (Cascino, CxGsNLP 2025)

ACL

• Carlotta Marianna Cascino. 2025. A is for a-generics: Predicate Collectivity in Generic Constructions. In Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Construction Grammars and NLP, pages 109–119, Düsseldorf, Germany. Association for Computational Linguistics.