Patrick Donnelly writes:
On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 11:47 AM, Reuben Thomas wrote:
Strictly speaking, Lua has won *a* FrontLine 2011 award, not *the*
FrontLine 2011 award.
Blowing your own trumpet is cool, but don't split the note!
Considering there's only one qualifying category for Lua and that
there is only one award given per year for that category, it seems to
me the article adjective "the" is correct.
Yup.
Even generally, it's correct to use "the" in such a case because it
refers to the award as a singular entity (i.e., it's not a generic
term, and there are not multiple parties giving awards with the same
name!), even if multiple instances of that reward are awarded. One
typically says, for instance, that a solder "received the purple
heart" even if many other soldiers did as well.