"I promise [pause] not to do it"
seems to me equivalent to
"I promise I won't do it".
However,
"I promise not [pause] to do it"
seems to me equivalent to
"I do not promise I will do it" (i.e. I cannot guarantee I will do it, maybe I will do it)
Is there a double meaning here? If so, all promises constructed that way ("I promise not to") may be interpreted as deceitful, treacherous, untrustworthy?
EDIT Just to clarify. The reason I am asking is that I saw a movie where the guy said "I promise not [pause] to kill X" and then he asked someone else to do it for him, thus violating the spirit of his promise (i.e. he wouldn't have X killed), but not the letter because he didn't actually do it himself. My impression, while I was watching the movie, was that the pause was deliberate, the guy was actually trying to hide a lie in his promise. This behaviour is not unheard of: in Ancient Greece oracles would pronounce obscure prophecies such that whatever happened the oracle would have been seen as having guessed. My question is about the grammatical structure of a sentence starting with "I promise not to" and the possibility to use it, consciously, to hide one's intentions.