"A screaming" - question to native speakers

[Paul Mackin]

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


Janos

Thanks for the clarification.

First, I don't think the sentence as written would ever sound
grammatically dislocated to a native speaker, but I do see your point
and technically it may be valid.and a case of meaning trumping
grammar.

"A scream comes across the sky" would not carry the same meaning to me
as "a screaming comes across the sky."


If  the former had been used the scream would seem single-sourced. One
screamer. Quick and over almost instantaneous.

As Pynchon wrote it, the meaning is more vague.  There are possibly
many screamers or sources of the screaming.The screaming seems more
prolonged, even continuing.

It's like the way the "ing" inflection works in verbs proper.. "I am
seeing" and "I was seeing" suggest continuous action as opposed to "I
see."  and "I saw."


Finally "a screaming" may seem a little more ominous than "the
screaming," with "a" serving to modify above and beyond the way a mere
indefinite article would as you suggest.  The way P wrote it sounds
best to me. Can.t really be sure about the "ominous" part.

Good luck.

P.










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