ON THE SCOPE OF SOME FOCUS PARTICLES AND THEIR INTERACTION WITH CAUSATIVES, ADVERBS, AND SUBJECTS IN JAPANESE

Abstract

It is a controversial issue whether a QR-like operation is clause-bound or not. This paper suggests that there is no single answer to this question, drawing evidence from the scopal property of some focus particles in Japanese. The answer largely depends on what is the target of the operation and the nature of the subject of the clause involved. Different focus particles have different targets of raising, and this not only correlates with the clause-boundedness of the operation but also with the possibility of their cooccurrence with a certain type of adverb, as well as with their scope order relative to a causative predicate.