This image appears on the first page of Steven Pinker's Harvard bio.
Steven Pinker wrote last week about why two of the country's smartest lawyers stumbled over the 36-word presidential oath of office. Professor Pinker's explanation? "[B]lowback from Chief Justice Roberts’s habit of grammatical niggling."
The Harvard don sets the scene thus:
On Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Flubber Hall of Fame when he administered the presidential oath of office apparently without notes. Instead of having Barack Obama “solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States,” Chief Justice Roberts had him “solemnly swear that I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully.” When Mr. Obama paused after “execute,” the chief justice prompted him to continue with “faithfully the office of president of the United States.”
Pinker identifies the culprit as the Chief Justice's distaste for "split verbs". This grammatical outrage puts "an adverb comes between an infinitive marker like 'to,' or an auxiliary like 'will,' and the main verb of the sentence." The prof (who moonlights as the chairman of the usage panel of The American Heritage Dictionary) continues:
According to this superstition, Captain Kirk made a grammatical error when he declared that the five-year mission of the starship Enterprise was “to boldly go where no man has gone before”; it should have been “to go boldly.” Likewise, Dolly Parton should not have declared that “I will always love you” but “I always will love you” or “I will love you always.”
Chief Justice Roberts just couldn't bear, Pinker suggests, to leave "faithfully" between "I will" and "execute the Office of the President of the United States". First he stuck it at the end of the phrase, and when now-President Barack Obama in a state of inchoateness and mid-oath hesitated, the Chief jabbed "faithfully" right after "I will execute". Both times, he solved the split verb problem that for 200-plus years has vexed Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.
Chief Justice Roberts and President Obama tried again the following evening and nailed it this time. Split verb and all.
