You've misquoted the amendment. It is "the right to peaceably assemble." The Constitution was written before the invention of grammar nazis, and before Victorian snobs decided you couldn't split an infinitive verb.
No, your parent comment has in fact literally quoted the amendment. For example, on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_S... you will find the full text as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Please be more careful before posting in the future.
(Article the first has never been ratified. Article the second was ratified in 1992. Articles three through twelve were ratified as the first ten amendments in 1791.)
Please be more careful before posting in the future.
Interestingly, to me at least, I read the quote, and remembered the text with a split infinitive. To check that I was right, I googled the text of the amendment, which google helpfully displayed above the search results. Seeing that I was right, I copied and pasted the text from google into the comment box here. What I did not do was read the whole text that google provided, only the relevant clause. If I had read the whole thing I would have realized it was a paraphrase rather than the actual text. I offer my humblest and deepest possible apologies to the OP, and to you.
However, I probably won't be much more careful when posting in the future. I try to keep my statements of fact on HN accurate by checking at least some source. In the end that's as far as I'm going to go.
The excuse I heard was that
an infinitive in English is two
words but corresponds to a single
word in Latin, and, of course, as
all good Latin experts know, English
grammar should be as much like Latin
as possible! So, since can't split
a single word infinitive in Latin,
we shouldn't in English! So,
"to be" is okay but "to not be" would
be bad. "To an infinitive split" would
be awful! So, string me up if I were
to badly split an infinitive!
Sometimes it just sounds better. Why it does is an interesting question for linguists.
"To boldly go where no man has gone before"
"We are determined to completely and utterly eradicate the disease."
"She wants to gradually get rid of her teddy bears."
"Writers should learn to not split infinitives."
It's also not always possible to eliminate the split infinitive, or the infinitive, without changing the direct or implied meaning of the sentence. "She wants to get rid of her teddy bears gradually" works fairly well.
"Boldly going where no man has gone before" is close, but doesn't capture the same challenge, summons, call to action as the original. Nor does it sound as pleasing.
Problem is, without thinking about
the likely meaning, at first glance
it's not clear what 'gradually' modifies,
that is, it may modify 'wants', that
is, her wanting is only gradual and
not yet full; such are some of the
possibilities of subtlety of meaning
with the English
language!
