tianshan

By law, a qualified physician can only prescribe medicine, protecting the public.

(A) By law, a qualified physician can only prescribe medicine, protecting the public.

(B) By law, only a qualified physician can prescribe medicine, protecting the public.

(C) By law, only a qualified physician can prescribe medicine which protects the public.

(D) In order to protect the public, by law a qualified physician only can prescribe medicine.（E）

(E) In order to protect the public, by law only a qualified physician can prescribe medicine

WHY CHOICE （E），ONLY的用法到底是怎样的啊，不是说轻易不要改变ONLY的位置吗，请NN们给点详细的说明

个人认为这道题有点难。正如你所言，一般情况下，不应该改动only这种比较特殊的修饰词，但是，本句的only如果不改动位置，则句子的逻辑性就有问题了。如A：by law(根据法律)，a qualified physician can only prescribe medicine(有资格的医生只能开药)，protecting the public(保护大众)。从翻译来看，这种逻辑感觉很别扭。再如E：in order to protect the public(为了保护大众)，by law(根据法律) only a qualified physician can prescribe medicine(只有有资格的医生才能开药)，这种说法至少很合乎常理。至于为什么protecting the public被改为in order to protect the public，我也不是很确定，因为我一开始认为protecting作为一个伴随结果修饰主句，从这个角度，我们至少可以排除C，在B/E之间，我认为可能的解释是：protecting the public的修饰对象比较模糊，其可以修饰主句，也可以作为是主句成分打断了By law protecting the public的结构，这样的话，law和protect之间的目的行为关系就比较明确了，所以in order to就比较合理。

对于ETS来说，他可能就说句子有很强的因果关系，所以用in order to。看到这种解释，你也没辙。就这么熟悉熟悉感觉吧。