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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