I have considered that you have gone through this document here, the original source of this question and the other answer here, but then it's still perplexing.
So now...
I shall try to address the Or could you possibly explain that with another example that is easier to understand? part here:
Articles are difficult to understand and depending on the context their usage changes. I have recently asked a question on this.
Now, please note that I'm creating the context here.
The scene is — you are standing in the Sasan Gir Forest (home to the Asiatic Lions) and I'm with you providing some information about the area and the animals found in. I'll use all those three sentence structures in concern.
1: A lion is friendly
This means there is a (one) lion somewhere who is friendly.
What that explanation says -- "the extinction happens to every member of that species." Correct! Compare it with this example. Any one tiger cannot be in danger to become extinct. And yes, species is a group noun and can take indefinite article. OALD example says -"a rare species of beetle."
Now,
2: The lions are friendly
This in this context means I'm talking about the specific lions, precisely I'm talking about the Asiatic Lions who are friendly and not the African lions.
What that explanation says --"the predicate is the characteristics of the species." True again! However, in my example, I'm not talking about extinction but friendliness and hence, it could be understood that I refer to the character of friendliness of particular lions. When we are talking about extinction, we should expect this to be true of any tiger because when the species of some animal gets extincted, you don't find that animal anymore.
And finally,
3: Lions are friendly
This takes the entire species of this animal. It talks about the characteristic of an animal. As we say dogs are loyal, which means take any dog, it's loyal because it's it character.
What that explanation says -- "we are talking about the tigers in aggregate." Correct! This matches with the example given above #3. Without any article, it means you are talking about the entire mass, species as a whole. Check - dogs are loyal to humans.
All in all, the plural generic seems to be easily understandable for English learners like me.
This site confirms it! :)
tardy
noun
an occasion when you are late for a class, or a record that a teacher keeps of this
MacMillan
The plural is tardies.
See also Wiktionary:
tardy (plural tardies)
(US) A piece of paper given to students who are late to class.
The teacher gave her a tardy because she did not come into the classroom until after the bell.
Before turning to the dictionary I had posted the following:
As to saying that tardy is an adjective, well it is also used as a noun. Someone can have one absence and one tardy this week. Or someone could have two or more tardies.
We can indeed convert adjectives to nouns by using only the first part of an "adjective-noun" combination. Consider smiley face. That became smiley. Oh, my gosh this girl likes to use smileys in her texts.
If a word is used as a noun, it's a noun.
Best Answer
You use the indefinite article "a" when you are talking about one of something, but not a "specific" one: you use the definite article "the" when talking about a specific one.
To make a general statement about a countable noun, you therefore use either the plural or the indefinite article "a".
The plural is the best choice in most circumstances: you might use the indefinite article if, while making a general statement, you are thinking about just one of the subject:
It is possible to use the, but only if you sneak an indefinite article later. This usage is uncommon:
For uncountables, no plural is possible and you do not use an article either
The object follows the normal rules, depending on how many of the object one individual subject likes/loves/needs. Remember that hockey is uncountable...