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I have the following sentence:

"The KKK was a secret organization; apart from a few top leaders the members never revealed their membership and wore masks in public."

Does the adverb "never" modify only the first clause, or also the second one?

"The members" never wore masks in public, or did they?

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  • It would be exceedingly odd if the "members" wore masks in public, but that is indeed what the sentence says.
    – Mark Hubbard
    Commented Jul 7, 2016 at 15:18
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    I suspect that at the syntactic level, constructions like this are always ambiguous. Certainly in this specific case it's a matter of opinion (guided by pragmatics / semantics) whether the scope of never extends to the final clause or not.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jul 7, 2016 at 15:29
  • This sentence refers to the second K.K.K. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…)
    – Paul Jim
    Commented Jul 7, 2016 at 15:38
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    Possible duplicate of "Find ten apples and oranges" Do I find 10 or 20? (though the coordination is not identical).
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jul 7, 2016 at 15:49

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The adverb is only modifying the first clause. The members concealed their identities (and thus their membership in the KKK from those they dealt with on a day-to-day basis) by wearing masks at all public KKK events. In the current construction of this sentence, the adverb would only modify both clauses if the conjunction were "or" instead of "and."

The sentence is worded awkwardly, but it does make sense if you're familiar with the context of why KKK members wear hoods or masks in public.

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