One of the most important discoveries of modern linguistic theory is that                  abstract structural properties of utterances place subtle restrictions on how we can                  use a given form or description. For the past thirty years, these restrictions have                  been explored for possible clues to the exact nature of the structural properties in                  question. In The Syntax of (In)dependence Ken Safir explores these structural                  properties and develops a theory of dependent identity interpretations that also                  leads to new empirical generalizations. These generalizations range across a wide                  class of empirical phenomena, including the distribution of crossover effects, bound                  variables in ellipsis, functional answers to questions, resumptive pronoun                  constructions, (anti-) reconstruction effects, and proxy readings.Safir approaches                  these interpretive issues from the perspective that the structural properties of all                  natural languages reflect an innate linguistic capacity, as embodied in Universal                  Grammar (UG). This monograph explores the way a particular syntactic restriction                  imposed by UG limits the range of dependent identity interpretations that a sentence                  can have and hence the range of possible entailments it can have on the basis of                  these anaphoric interpretations. Although certain of these interpretations may be                  favored by manipulating a discourse, the work focuses on interpretive restrictions                  that cannot be repaired by discourse accommodation. More specifically, Safir's main                  proposal is dependent identity interpretations are restricted by a c-command                  prohibition and not by a c-command licensing condition-- that c-command does not                  license dependencies but plays a role in ruling them out. Although cross-linguisitic                  discussion in the main text is very limited, Safir adds an appendix on scrambling                  and reconstruction that focuses on scrambling in Hindi.

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