identity: who or what a thing or person is
Is this sentence correct? shouldn't there be an "a" before the word "person"?
I mean it's either definite or indefinite, but in this sentence it's neither this nor that.
Somebody told me there is an "a" before "thing" and the one before "person" is just removed and the sentence is ok.
The indefinite article a applies to both thing and person. If you have a list, or just two items, joined by and or or (possibly other things, can't think of it off the top of my head), a lot of things that go before them apply to both/all of those items.
I painted the walls and I painted the fence.
Gosh, isn't that unwieldy? Well, we can simplify it:
I painted the walls and the fence.
In this case, the verb applies to both of those as objects equally. In just the same way:
I painted the walls and fence
The the is covering both walls and fence. Similarly:
Do you own a cat or do you own a dog?
This can become:
Do you own a cat or a dog?
And even further:
Do you own a cat or dog?
Adjectives can do it too:
I see lots of blue cars and bicycles.
That's a nice tidy sentence, but we could write the equivalent longer:
I see lots of blue cars and blue bicycles.
And longer still:
I see lots of blue cars and lots of blue bicycles.
And yet longer:
I see lots of blue cars and I see lots of blue bicycles.
The shorter version is preferable in many cases, and the longest versions are utterly unnatural.
