Romney did not take Obama's "you didn't build that" speech out of context - An English Lesson for the White House!

An English
Lesson for the White House

The following is the exact transcript of President
Obama's “You didn't build that!” speech, taken from
whitehouse.gov (full link below):

“There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans
who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They
know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t
get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own.
I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I
was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there.
It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me
tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people
out there.

“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.”

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/13/remarks...

Rule of
Construction in the English Language: The antecedent
to a pronoun is the word (a noun) for which the pronoun stands.

http://www.towson.edu/ows/pro_antagree.htm

Now, take a look at
these two sentences from Obama's speech, admittedly taken out of
context for the purpose of this analysis:

“If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build
that. Somebody else made
that happen.”

Question: What
is the antecedent of the pronoun “that”
in the above sentences? It's obviously the noun “business.”

But the claim is that the sentences were taken
out of context, so let's look also at the previous sentence and see if
there's another candidate (or candidates) for the antecedent of
“that” in the sentences we're considering:

“Somebody
invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you
didn’t build that.
Somebody else made that happen.”

Next Question: What
is/are the next candidate(s), if any, for the antecedent of “that”
in the sentences in question? Possibly the two nouns, “roads and
bridges” in the previous sentence?

Does taking the “you didn't build that”
and “somebody else made that
happen” sentences out of context actually change their meaning, the real
meaning being the two "thats" refer
back to “roads and bridges”? Not at all, because of a pretty
well-known rule of construction in the English Language, one that
even a graduate of Columbia and Harvard Law (and all of his Ivy League educated speech-writers) must know:

Rule of Construction in the English Language: “The
pronoun must agree with its antecedent in number. . .
A singular pronoun must replace a singular noun; a plural pronoun
must replace a plural noun.”

http://www.towson.edu/ows/pro_antagree.htm

Simply put,
“roads and bridges” cannot be the antecedent of the pronoun
“that” because “that” is singular, and two nouns
cannot properly be the antecedents of a singular pronoun. If Mr.
Obama had intended that the pronoun he was choosing refer back to
“roads and bridges”, he would/should have used the plural pronoun
“those.”

Thus the segment
in question would have read as follows had it been Mr. Obama's
actual intent to refer back to roads and bridges:

“Somebody
invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you
didn’t build those. Somebody else made those happen.”

But he didn't!
So despite all of the wailing, gnashing of teeth and screaming from
the left (the self-anointed “intellectuals” among us!) that the
sentence Mitt Romney accurately quoted in a speech of his own
was “taken out of context,” we are left with the meaning Mr.
Obama obviously intended - he said what he meant when he told small business
entrepreneurs across the land, “If you've got a business – you didn't build
that.”