Anonymous“
Why do you think RayH seemed to have said this has to be "the fearful wailing"?
1)He heard a fearful wailing of a dog
I think he said it has to be:
2)He heard
the fearful wailing of a dog
I think RayH is correct but I also think no. 1 can be correct under a right situation. I think it would have been better if the sentence had a plural noun after "of" like this:
He heard a fearful wailing of dogs
”
You'll have to wait for RayH's explanation for his preferences. He heard a fearful wailing of a dog is fine grammatically but it does suggest that you may hear different kinds of wailings of a dog and therefore the sentence may sound odd to some. The plural dogs simply indicates that there were at least two dogs, nothing else. No grammatical difference, really.
Grammatical terms cause confusion even among experts, so you have nothing to worry about!
This is because not all grammarians and usage experts use them in the same way. There are people who don't use the term "verbal noun" at all. They regard what I consider a verbal noun as a gerund. Examples:
The speaking of English is easy. (A verbal noun and because speaking is a noun, the is posible before it. Even an adjectival attribute can be used: The correct speaking of English is easy.)
Speaking English is easy. (A gerund, which to my mind is neither a verb nor a noun but a little bit of both. The is not possible before a gerund, nor is an adjectival attribute and these two things are a clear sign (to me) that a gerund is not a noun: Correct speaking English is easy. (WRONG!!!)
Because there are hardly any inflections in English, there is bound to be occasional confusion as to the exact meaning of every word ending in ing as your example (beginning) in another post shows.
I can't remember what I have written about these things before but if you are interested, you may wish to read these posts that deal with the gerund, verbal nouns and participles and their differences:
subject of gerund gerund v present participle gerund v verbal noun
CB