Negative scope and head raising in Japanese

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to show, on the basis of an adverbial particle attached to the right of a verbal constituent, that in Japanese, the negative element na(i) ‘not’ – a light predicate devoid of its original adjectival characteristics – undergoes overt head movement to T, while other predicative elements do not. Japanese is shown to have a very limited option of overt head raising, just like English, based on the fact that due to an infixing constraint, an adverbial particle cannot be attached to the right of a head to be combined with a higher head via overt raising. I also argue that the raising of the negative head to T brings forth the effect of expanding its scope over TP, and that the licensing of negative polarity items interacts in an interesting way with the overt position of the negative na(i).