An Enhanced Account of Relative Identity: Double-Reference Starting Point and Dual-Track Feature

Abstract

This article gives a holistic re-examination of the semantic content and syntactic structure of the concept of relative identity: it suggests and explains an expanded and enhanced dual-track characterization ofrelativeidentity.Itisexpandedinthissense:itsduecoverageisnot narrowlyrestrictedtothe equal-status caseof identity statements(the symmetric case for identity simplex) but also includes the category-assimilating case (the asymmetric case for identity complex), both of which are unified by the shared semantic core content of relative identity. It is enhanced in this sense: it is intended to give a more refined characterization of relative identity for the sake of enhancing our understanding of the structure and content of real-life relative-identity statements in people’s basic employment of language in view of the relation between thought, language, and the world.