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In the following paragraph is "dying" a completed act, so that Margie is dead, or is it a process, so that Margie is in a state of dying? Is the context sufficient to establish the meaning?

But who would believe the ramblings of a mad man with fourteen pages worth of Russian poetry taped to his white board like crime-scene photos? Each page had circles that led to notes written in dry-erase, enlarged margins. Margie certainly didn’t, but perhaps dying had made her a cynic.

The question is sufficiently clear to have produced a couple of answers (and no doubt many more if it hadn't been closed so quickly). To respond to a comment, I supplied details, knowing that those details enucleate my question, and make further answers pointless.

k1eran
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Zan700
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    What is the source of the paragraph? – Joachim Oct 13 '22 at 06:11
  • You'll have to give us context. A dead person can't be a cynic unless you're talking about them in a hypothetical afterlife (in which case, dying would be complete). Dying people don't usually study Russian poetry in much detail either, so it's hard to guess what is going on here. It might be referring to Maggie's encounters with other dying or dead people but we don't know if that fits the story. – Stuart F Oct 13 '22 at 09:17
  • @Joachim The paragraph is from an unpublished short story (not mine). By the end of the story, the reader knows which meaning is intended. However, the story reveals midway that it's about cryogenics, so that the passage I excerpted, which is the opening paragraph, is now (midway) open to two meanings, so the reader is held in suspense. I'm not sure the writer intended that, but if so, it's pretty clever (is it a literary technique?). If I provided more of a context that would have undermined my question. I wanted to gauge what a reader without context would make of Margie's dying. – Zan700 Oct 13 '22 at 15:59
  • @StuartF Please see response to Joachim. – Zan700 Oct 13 '22 at 17:39
  • A reader would not be faced with an isolated sentence void of context. A reader would know who the character Margie is, her social background, her age and, normally, her connection with the other main characters. . – Mari-Lou A Oct 14 '22 at 00:43
  • Your question has influenced how we, the reader, interpret the specific phrase. A character is normally alive when they speak to us on the page. Your question is suggesting that she is dead. – Mari-Lou A Oct 14 '22 at 00:49
  • You received two answers but three users voted to close your question because they see it lacks detail. Your lengthy edit succeeds only in criticizing their judgement. – Mari-Lou A Oct 14 '22 at 00:52
  • @Mari-Lou Every short story and novel begins with a paragraph that the reader reads unaware of what follows. That first paragraph has only itself as context. The reader has to decide what that paragraph means while reading it. Perhaps a few paragraphs, pages or chapters later in the story/novel, the reader may reinterpret that initial paragraph. – Zan700 Oct 14 '22 at 15:22

2 Answers2

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From the paragraph alone we cannot deduce Margie is dead or not from the point of view of lexical semantics. Just at some point in time in the past she was in the process of dying and becoming more and more cynic at the same time. There is no any indication of her final state.

Serguei
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In the following paragraph is "dying" a completed act?

Unless the "-ing" word is

(i) a common noun - These have no implied action or duration (a painting, a building), or

(ii) a verbal noun - These imply an instance of a complete action (the changing of the guard, the implementing of a decision). NB a common noun can usually be substituted for a verbal noun - if "death" can be substituted for "dying" then it is not transitional.

then all -ing forms (chiefly participles and gerunds) imply the durative effect of an action that was incomplete at the time referred to and are thus transitional.

Greybeard
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    Dying is the action that takes something from the live state to the dead state. It can be be very quick, like the dying of the light in a room when the lamps are switched off. In the case of a human being, there are many forms of sudden death, where “state” doesn’t apply. I agree with this answer, but I think in the OP’s example it makes more sense to think of dying as an action between states and not a state in itself. –  Oct 14 '22 at 06:09