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By: Carl Offner

I haven't been following the President's speeches, but this looks to me to be rather out of character for Barack Obama, which is probably why it's worded awkwardly. It looks to me very much like an...

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By: Bloix

The problem is that after Obama mentions the "unbelievable American system" - singular noun phrase - he interposes "roads and bridges" - plural noun phrase. Then he says "business" - singular noun....

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By: Jay Livingston

Those people who insist that it "unambiguously" refers to business are thinking only of the grammar of the sentence rather than the flow of thought. The first that sounds to me like a relative pronoun:...

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By: Jeff Carney

Yes. But if you accept the ambiguity here, you've gotta go along when, eg., Romney say corporations are people. The meaning is there, somewhere, in the larger context. To deny it in either case is to...

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By: Matt

I also naturally - and only, but for prompting - got the interpretation of that being in reference to the business, and Obama's pause seems to be just him realizing how far this utterance actually goes...

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By: johnesh

"Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet." This is another thing that I see all the time that I find really infuriating. It suggests that...

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By: Nick Lamb

It makes sense to capitalise Internet because this is the Internet, in the same way that Liz is (from my perspective as a British citizen) the Queen, even though of course there were and will be other...

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By: Saskia

To me, even in context, it still sounded as if the two "thats" were referring to the business. In fact, I would find it confusing to parse this any other way. The inflection he uses in his speech makes...

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By: J.W. Brewer

Why isn't the simplest analysis that: a) the "thats" in question unambiguously refer to "business" as a matter of the usual parsing conventions native English speakers would use for this form of words;...

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By: Jay Livingston

I hope that the number and variety of the interpretations offered here put paid to the claim that Obama's utterance and intended meaning are "unambiguous." The article in the recent New Yorker on...

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By: Dan M.

@J.W.Brewer, Even under the theory that Obama meant to say those words, and that the normal rules of interpretation only allow them to mean something other than what he wanted them to mean, I think...

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By: Michael Watts

Another vote of support for "that" referring to "if you've got a business", even in context. Some portion of my parse comes from the fact that without taking it as the referent of "that", the "if...

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By: Michael Watts

also, I can totally spell "ad" :(

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By: Viseguy

Obama was trying to say what Elizabeth Warren said — clearly, eloquently, passionately — here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htX2usfqMEs&t=47s

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By: Daublin

I have looked up the transcript and the speech, and I feel the sentence really meant what it sounded like. Here's a transcript and a longer clip:...

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By: chris

You built a factory out there - good for you That would indeed be impressive; I have never in my life seen a factory built by one person. Similar remarks apply to most places of business, really. If...

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By: Adrian Morgan

Late comment because I didn't actually listen to the transcript until reading the July 26 follow-up post (I don't come to Language Log for the politics), but my comment is more relevant here than...

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By: BlogArena » Blog Archive » Questions for Geoff Pullum: The ‘Grammar...

[…] But then when it comes to politicians and the press, suddenly the ordinary social-psychological contract is torn up, and it’s time to catch them in errors and ridicule them and drag things out of...

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