So we now know why President Obama became the first US president who did the presidential oath of office twice within two days. It was the location of an adverb "faithfully" in the famous sentence that caused him to do so and it was the Chief Justice John G. Roberts who misplaced it in the latter part of the sentence in the televised ceremony. The Chief Justice said, according to a report, "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will execute the Office of President of the United States faithfully, ..." while he was supposed to say "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, ..."
That's why the new President who memorized the sentence noted the Chief Justice's error and hesitated a couple of seconds to follow the words uttered by the latter and that's why they had the second oath of ceremony privately just to make sure that no one challenges the legality of the oath, this time the President saying it the way it should be. We note that the President is a lawyer as much as the Chief Justice is in this case. I suppose it is a legal question, not a linguistic question as it seems to me the sentence means the same regardless of the location of the adverb. Minoru Mochizuki --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Persons posting messages to not_honyaku assume all responsibility for their messages. The list owner does not review messages prior to posting, and accepts no responsibility for the content of messages posted. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
