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I do not know why you believe the first of your examples is unacceptable. It will sound idiomatic to users of at least American Englsh. "I went to a shop to get some winter clothing" and "I went to t …

Both are correct with a very slight difference in meaning. "The characteristics that I like" implies all of the characteristics that I like. "Characteristics that I like" implies some of the charact …

Either is correct because mass-nouns may use a definite article or use no article. "Water is a compound of oxygen and hydrogen." No article. "The water is cold today." A definite article. The fact …

It depends on what is being asked about and how it is being answered. If the answer is framed to indicate that what is being asked about is one member of a class, then the indefinite article is need …

This is close to a duplicate of something you posted yesterday. The definite article before nouns derived from verbs Either omitting or using the definite article is acceptable grammatically in thes …

Either may be correct: it depends on what you want to express. "The American people" refers to such people as a collective unity. So you can say that "The American people elect a president once ever …

Given the lack of any context whatsoever, it is impossible to say whether "attribute" or "attribution" is the appropriate choice of word. The X falls into two categories, the internal and the externa …

In each of your cases, the basic form is "the X of a Y." That form is indeed correct and implies that there is only one possible instantiation of X given Y. In one sense of the word "plot," a novel c …

"Potential" can be used as a noun or an adjective. As a noun, it is hard to consider it a count noun. If "potential" is being used as a mass noun, no article is required. I gave her water mass n …

I cannot be sure what the authors intended; it is not a cleverly drafted sentence (or maybe it is a very cleverly drafted sentence). If they used only some of the data, then they clearly cannot say "t …

The context of this question is puzzling. Suppose the qualifications for someone to be interviewed are that the person must have a doctorate in mathematics and experience in discrete mathematics. Unde …

If, however, we are referring to members of the set, we do use articles. The European country that I most like to visit is Italy. A European country that I have not visited is Bulgaria. … So if you are talking about one or more paricular exemplars of that concept, articles apply. …

This is actually a hard question. Let’s start with your second example. In context, all the bags are of the same type. So, if someone were to ask you what type of bag the shop sells, you may answer T …

"Disappearance" is not indefinite. It is abstract. "Disappearance" represents one of many types of condition or state that relate to a person such as presence, absence, health, etc. The absence of a …

The very brief answer is that "abandon ship" is an idiom, a stock phrase. There also seems to be a convention that orders of a military or quasi-military nature tend to be succinct, e.g., "Cease fire" …