evening (without preposition) / to start to doing

I agree with CJ.

Here's another example with the word evening.  I can easily imagine someone saying something like the following (in everyday English!) to refer to the fact that dusk/sunset arrived an hour earlier than usual after the clocks had been set forward an hour (Daylight Saving Time):

Evening arrived an hour earlier yesterday.



EDIT:
By the way, you'll notice I didn't use an article with dusk or sunset either.

Hi Espeland

In my example, the word evening was used much the same way that the name of a day of the week (e.g. Tuesday) or the name of a month (e.g. August) would be used.  Perhaps that will help you reconcile the missing article.

CalifJim wrote:

CB, I hate to disagree, because your comments are always so very helpful and appropriate, and you are such a valuable resource on the forum. Nevertheless, I don't think any poetic license whatever is involved here.

Thank you for your kind words, Jim. As English is not my mother tongue, I don't always succeed in choosing the best word for everything. Poetic licence may not be the right expression. What I meant is this basic grammatical fact: if the of-genitive is used, the usually precedes the noun before the of:

What's the name of this town?
I don't like the color of the floor.
This is the address of the man in question.

The is used in the above examples because "this town" has only one name, "the floor" has only one color and "the man in question" has only one address. Or that's what the sentences imply, anyway. Because "a hot day" has only one evening, English grammatical rules would require:

The evening of a hot day...

Yet Steinbeck omitted the article. To call that "poetic" may not be a good idea after all. I just couldn't think of a better word when I wrote my previous post. I meant that grammatical rules required an article but Steinbeck preferred not to have one, in other words, he violated a grammatical rule, which is fairly common in poems.

As you and all native speakers of English know, the is not used in similar of-structures when the noun before the of refers to one of many:

He was a representative of Portugal in the Sydney Olympics.

This time there were many other representatives, that's why a is used. But:

She was the representative of Portugal in the beauty contest. (= the only representative)

An evening of a hot day appears inconceivable to me because a day doesn't have many evenings. Therefore, the really should be used, but Steinbeck thought differently for reasons known only to him.

Cheers
CB

CalifJim wrote:

Light from several lanterns filled the room with a soft glow. Laughter of children was heard on the playground. Hmm.  Do these have to be The light ... and The laughter ... ?

I certainly don't want to criticize Steinbeck's English at all. I dealt with the of-genitive in my previous post and there isn't one in your first sentence, so I'll say nothing about it. Laughter of children is also different grammatically since laughter is an uncountable noun, unlike evening. I'm not saying this is always the decisive factor but in this case it seems to make the difference in the use of the article, at least to me. When laughter of children was heard, it means that some laughter was heard, not necessarily all of it, and consequently dropping the article is normal.

This is how I understand the difference and I don't mind at all if some people disagree with me.

CB

Out of interest, would anyone object to the articleless "Evening" in the original example if it were a case of personification?

MrP