Indices and Identity (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs) Book

This text focuses on the different conditions of the expressions of language 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 co-indexing and nonco-indexing - the correspondence between indexical relations among expressions and the valuation relation that holds among them. 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 the authors 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 a 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 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.Read More