"A screaming" - question to native speakers

[malignd at aol.com]

Your grammar book is incorrect.  One can certainly use an indefinite 
article with a gerund. " A running of the bulls," for instance.  It's 
not common, but it breaks no rules.

My take on a screaming is much like Paul's.  To say "A screaming comes 
across ..." as opposed to "Screaming comes across ..." separates this 
sound from other sound and out of the background noise.  As does 
"across the sky": the screaming seemingly, metaphorically, stretches 
from horizon to horizon.

The main thing, I should think, in translating, is to capture the 
poetic grab of the sentence.  It really is very powerful in English, 
much stronger than "A scream ..."  Screaming implies length and the 
sentence offers no end to it.


Paul,

sorry, "pronoun" was due to sleepiness, of course it's an indef. 
article.
My point is the following: grammatically you can't use an indefinite
article with gerund, only with countable nouns. There is no such
sentence as "Two screamings come across the sky". At least that's what
my textbook English sez to me. That's why I rely on your native ear.
What I ask is how  you perceive it:
- is it a deliberate act of grammatical dislocation (substituting
uncountable "screaming" for the more usual countable noun "scream"),
- or is it a meaning of "a" different from the indefinite article,
that is, "one kind of" (as in "a poise, an uneasiness").

János

2009/ 6/30 Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gma
il.com>:
> I wasn't sure I understood Janos' question.
>
> Semantically  of course we don't know yet whether the screaming was
> from a human, another primate, or was a scream-like sound generated by
> an inanimate object.
>
> But syntactically (grammatically), the construction is completely
> straightforward.  A verbal noun (gerund) preceded by an indefinite
> article.
>
> P
>
> 2009/6/30 Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>:
>> I have to choose option #3.  It seems to me to be as onomatopoetic as
>> it is anything else.  It is a particular screaming only after we read
>> on.  Its initial signified meaning is unknown, so it might be any
>> screaming, physical, metaphysical or hallucinatory.  That ambiguity 
is
>> a part of the greatness of it as an opening phrase.  The first thing
>> that happens to the reader is that he (and / or she) is cast out of
>> certainty like a progenitor from Paradise.
>>
>> 2009/6/29 János Székely <miksaapja at gmail.com>:
>>> I'm writing an essay on translating GR and I'm having doubts "after
>>> the fact": Would you read "a screaming" in the first sentence as
>>> - pronoun + countable noun, or as
>>> - a [kind of] screaming,
>>> or is it ambiguous?
>>>
>>> Thx
>>> János
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>