Under what conditions are expressions of a language the same; when are  they different? Indices and Identity focuses on this question in the  context of the theory of anaphora and on the role of indices in  characterizing syntactic and semantic identity of expressions. Fiengo  and May develop two main themes within the theory of anaphora. The first  pertains to the meaning of coindexing and non-coindexing -- the  correspondence between indexical relations among expressions and the  valuation relation that holds among them -- while the second is the  development of Dependency Theory, the theory of the relations of  occurrences of indices. The novelty of Fiengo and May's approach lies  with their characterization of indexical dependencies and the conditions  under which structures manifest the same or different dependency. In  particular, Indices and Identity emphasizes issues raised by strict and  sloppy identity in ellipsis, exploring what Fiengo and May call "the  eliminative puzzles of ellipsis." The significance of these puzzles is  that they show the shortcomings of current theories of anaphora in  ellipsis, while illustrating an application of Dependency Theory to  complex cases of strict and sloppy identity. Elliptical contexts in turn  lead to consideration of the embedding of the formal syntactic notions  of identity arising from indices and dependencies within more general  notions of structural identity. This relates to a consideration of the  foundations of reconstruction, which, the authors argue, is syntactic  identity up to indexical identity and vehicle change -- variation in the  syntactic form of expression of arguments. The book concludes with a  discussion of the relation of reconstruction, logical representation in  grammar, and the application of grammatical constraints. The discussion  focuses on antecedent contained deletion, and stands independently as a  comprehensive study of this construction. Linguistic Inquiry  Monograph No. 24

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