@inproceedings{cascino-2025-generics,
    title = "A is for a-generics: Predicate Collectivity in Generic Constructions",
    author = "Cascino, Carlotta Marianna",
    editor = "Bonial, Claire  and
      Torgbi, Melissa  and
      Weissweiler, Leonie  and
      Blodgett, Austin  and
      Beuls, Katrien  and
      Van Eecke, Paul  and
      Tayyar Madabushi, Harish",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Construction Grammars and NLP",
    month = sep,
    year = "2025",
    address = {D{\"u}sseldorf, Germany},
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/author-page-yu-wang-polytechnic/2025.cxgsnlp-1.11/",
    pages = "109--119",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-318-0",
    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."
}