"A screaming" - question to native speakers

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

The scarlet letter "A" screaming comes through the sky...


Heikki

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009, Paul Mackin wrote:

> 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
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>