posthumously

[Paul Frank]

The author could have written something like this: "Baker and six
posthumously honored black World War II veterans received medals at a
1997 White House ceremony."

Paul


On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 4:23 AM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Â There is a slight problem with the distributive syntax in the
> following sentence:
>
>> Baker and six other black World War II veterans received medals
>> posthumously at a 1997 White House ceremony.
>
> Looking at this sentence alone, would it be fair to conclude that the
> medals were awarded to all seven veterans after they were already dead?
> Unfortunately, "posthumously" here refers only to "six other ...
> veterans" and not to Baker--the line comes in the middle of an article
> about a recent abruptly unsuccessful visit of Baker's family to the
> White House, following Vernon Baker's death in July of this year. So the
> 1997 award was not "posthumous" for Baker.
>
> The article, which I received by email, is credited to Fox News, but I
> have not looked for the original on-line.

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