Negative structure and object movement in Japanese

要旨

This paper investigates negative structure in Japanese. The scope of Japanese negation appears to be narrower than that of English, which has led to different treatment of Japanese and English negation in the literature. I propose an analysis that maintains the same negative structure for Japanese and English. I demonstrate that all the scope facts regarding negative sentences in Japanese can be accounted for if we assume obligatory object movement into the TP-domain in Japanese, that is, the difference between Japanese and English is not the structural position of negation but the existence of this obligatory object movement in Japanese. The analysis also involves a discussion of scopal properties of certain elements such as focused or disjunctive phrases, which play a crucial role to determine the position of objects. Then I argue that the obligatory object movement in Japanese is driven by the need for accusative Case-particle licensing, on the basis of the observation that objects without a Case-particle are generally immobile in Japanese. I show that this analysis leads to a new perspective on A-scrambling in Japanese.