 Objection 9: One may argue that the plausibility of RI rests to a large degree on certain linguistic phenomena and that we do not need it after all because these phenomena are in fact apparent and the notion of relative identity can be explained away. For example, (Moltmann 2013) has recently argued that some apparent statements of sortal-relative identity can be analysed on the linguistic grounds as statements of absolute identity. Consider an example of such statements: “This is the same lump of clay but not the same statue as that”, which is uttered in front of, say, two photographs: one presenting the clay and the other showing the statue made out of the clay. Moltmann starts her analysis focussing on the two pronouns at stake: this and that, the so-called bare demonstratives. The analysis reveals two different functions thereof: referential and presentational. Due to the referential function a bare demonstrative picks up a unique feature, or a trope as Moltmann claims. Secondly, this feature (trope) is used to recognise its bearer (in any possible world that is accessible from the world where the pronoun is uttered). Now in the example above this refers to a complex trope, say the complex composed of this particular brownness and this roundness, and “with the help of” this trope maps to a lump of clay as a bearer of this trope. Similarly, that refers to another complex trope, say this particular brownness and this angularity and maps to a bearer of this trope. The crucial assumption here is that the tropes in question may have multiple bearers, e.g., the brownness and roundness is a trope borne both by the clay and the statue. Moltmann’s semantics of the (apparent) statements of sortal-relative identity of the form “This is the same … as that” has it that such statements are true if this refers to a trope such that at least one, but not all, of its bearers is identical (in the sense of absolute identity) to a bearer of the trope to which that refers. So our sentence “This is the same lump of clay but not the same statue as that” is true when (i) one bearer of the this trope is the same as a bearer of the that trope and (ii) another bearer of that first trope is not the same as a bearer of the other trope.