ON THE SCOPE OF NAZE ‘WHY’ IN JAPANESE

This paper investigates the scope of the adjunct wh-phrase naze ‘why’ in Japanese, and shows that there are two patterns of syntactic behavior visible in Japanese (Japanese A and B) with respect to its scope: it is clause-bound in Japanese B, while it is not in Japanese A. It is then argued (i) that the clause-boundedness of naze ‘why’ is a subcase of Comp-trace effects, as found in English, and wh-movement must take place before spell-out, (ii) that naze ‘why’ cannot be base-generated in the Spec of a [−Q] Comp in Japanese B, while it can in Japanese A, (iii) that Korean shows the same tendency in terms of the behavior of the corresponding adjunct wh-phrase way ‘why,’ and (iv) that English shows the same tendency as Japanese and Korean with respect to clefts and relative clauses with why.