During the opening night of the Republican National Convention, many speakers took to the podium and took advantage of a phrase spoken by President Obama that some are calling a grammatical error.
In a July 13 campaign appearance in Virginia, the president told an audience:
“If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
At least that's all the GOP would have you believe he said. The party has repeatedly used just those two sentences in campaign materials. In fact, the excerpt is part of a larger message:
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”
In a video released in late July, the Obama campaign says that "that" refers to the compound noun "roads and bridges."
But as the sentence is constructed (is that an em or an en dash?) mustn't "that" refer to "business"?
And who put the dash in there? Is it from an official transcript provided by Obama's team or was the speech put into print by the press or the Romney campaign?
Best Answer
English isn't a programming language. There's a certian level of ambiguity in just about any sentence or phrase. That means the listener has to be an active participant in the communications, by interpreting the meaning of what is being said.
It is fairly clear from the full context that he was probably intending to refer to the infrastructure of the country. However, some listeners would rather take it to mean something like, "The government built your business." That's their prerogative. It is also a valid interpretation of the sentence.
This is why a lot of politicians tend to talk in a boring, insanely complex (but linguistically safe) way.
As for the dash, presumably that was put in there to indicate a pause or stumble. The best way to decide how valid that is would be to watch the actual unabridged clip on YouTube and judge for yourself.