"A screaming" - question to native speakers

[David Morris]

Right.  Gerunds are not countable.  But Pynchon is a poet, and doesn't play
by the rules.  Feel free to interpret.

I like the "A" implications noted by others.  I also think using the gerund
"screaming" rather than the simple noun "scream" implies something that
continues over a long stretch of time, as would be the case of a rocket's
screaming across the sky.  Simply put, Pynchon has tied the gerund to the
object in a very concise way.

David Morris

2009/6/30 János Székely <miksaapja at gmail.com>

> 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 gmail.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
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
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