0.Introduction Japanese has two ways of forming sentential negation: regular negation with -na inÁected on the main verb, as in (1a), and wa-negation with the so-called topic marker -wa on the main verb followed by auxiliary suru inÁected with -na, as in (1b). The purpose of this paper is to provide a uniÀed syntactic analysis of the two types of negation based on data concerning the scope of negation and a quantiÀed object NP (object QNP), extracted through psycholinguistic experimentation using a technique known as the Truth Value Judgment Task (TVJT) (Crain and Thornton, 1998). We will argue that the Àndings of our experiment support a view that the negation projection is placed low in the clause structure, within the lexical vP domain. This paper is organized as follows. In section 1, we consider lexical and syntactic approaches to Japanese negation and conclude that the data calls for the syntactic approach with a negation projection (NegP) in the clause structure. We then present an argument that the scope interaction between negation and the object QNP makes a great test for the position of NegP in Japanese. We point out, however, that the data cannot be used as it is presented in the literature on this topic because the scope judgments reported there conÁict with each other, making it impossible for us to make any coherent conclusions. This raises a question as to the validity of the methodology employed in extracting these scope judgments. In section 2, we present the TVJT experiment that we conducted in order to extract more reliable scope judgments. After a discussion of the particulars of our experiment, we present our Àndings followed by their implications for the syntax of negation in Japanese.
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