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Here is a small text. Can anybody help me to understand why in the first selected sentence apples and plums are used with null article, and with the indefinite article in the second sentence?
Thanks in advance.

A man went into a shop and asked for a pound of apples which cost one shilling. The shopkeeper gave them to him. Then the man asked "Can i exchange the apples for a pound of plums? The price is the same." The shopkeeper agreed, took back apples and gave him plums. The man took them and was going to leave the shop. The shopkeeper asked him for the money.

"The money for what?" asked the man.
"The money for the plums." Said the shopkeeper.
"But i gave you the apples for the plums," answered the man.

"Well, then the money for appley"

"But you still have your apples", said the man and walked out of the shop.

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

I would have used 'the' in the first instance as well, but zero-article is acceptable: the sentence speaks of the type of fruit, not the specific ones bought and exchanged.

AlpheccaStars · Answer

The first sentence should be:

The shopkeeper agreed, took back the apples and gave him plums.

The apples are a specific set that has an earlier reference. This is the first mention of plums, so there is not a particular set of fruit.

Rusa · Answer

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Anonymous · Answer

We have many questions like this about articles from English-learners. They ask why is that so, and are there any rules that govern usage. Unfortunately for them there are no rules that cover the innumerable situations of article or no article. This is just something that has to be learned by experience, and this is a daunting task for a non-native speaker.

Native speakers know all of the countless situations by instinct, having grown up speaking and using the language. Note that a native speaker grows up with the language, and in addition has 6 yrs. of grade school, 2 yrs. of jr. high, and 4 yrs. of high school, all in English, during which time he learns all of the usage. A non-native speaker has nowhere near this sort of experience with the language: he's taught English typically by non-native speakers, and he's not interacting in the language with native English speakers all during the day, like in an English speaking country.

Thus, things like the underlined sections in that passage seem mysterious to an adult English learner, whereas they look quite familiar to a native speaker because he's heard this kind of thing before. When a native speaker is asked to explain them, he can give some vague grammatical rule about it, but the truth is things like this can't really be explained in terms of some kind of grammatical rule - this is just the way the language works and you have to learn this kind of thing by experience.

Anonymous · Answer

The best "grammatical" explanation I could give is that in the first underlined sentence you're trying to make it almost mathematical-sounding. This is how math word-problems are typically worded: the whole scheme is based on some pseudo-mathematical logic.

Then in the second underlined sentence we return to real-world action. The scam is in place, and it's out with the math and in with normal speech, and thus the article is used.

Rusa · Answer

Really, this is difficult to understand, but anyway thank you, i will learn it with experience.

Mister Micawber · Answer

"We have many questions like this"— I don't consider Anonymous posters one of 'us', sorry.

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