Negative sensitive items and the discourse-configurational nature of Japanese

We take up three Negative Sensitive Items (NSIs) in Japanese, Wh-MO plain negative indefinites, exceptive XP-sika, and certain minimizing indefinites, such as rokuna N (‘any decent N’). Although these three NSIs behave differently, we demonstrate that the two traditional NSI categories of Negative Concord Items (NCIs) and Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) are sufficient for characterizing these items. We argue that Wh-MO and XP-sika are NCIs, thus they contain a neg feature ([uneg]) which enters into (upward) agreement with its corresponding an uninterpretable feature ([ineg]). The third NSI, rokuna N, is an NPI. Two issues arise with XP-sika. First, it has an inherent focus feature, which distinguishes it from the other two. Second, this focus feature is syntactically active – meaning that movement is forced – only for the argument XP-sika. We argue that these properties of XP-sika associated with focus are independent of NP-sika as an NSI, and should be dealt with as an overall property of Japanese being a discourse configurational language. We introduce a case-theoretic solution to how focus becomes syntactically active solely with argument XP-sika.


Introduction
In this paper we will investigate the distributional differences of three kinds of negative sensitive items (NSIs) in Japanese. These are expressions that cannot survive without the presence of negation, and they include Wh-MO plain negative indefinites (also known as n-words, after Laka 1990) (1a); exceptive XP-sika (1b); and certain minimizing indefinites, such as rokuna N ('any decent N') (1c).
Taro-top skillfully what-mo skillfully make-neg-past 'Taro did not make anything well.' c. Taroo-wa {umaku} rokuna keeki-o {?umaku} tukur-anakat-ta. 1 Taro-top skillfully rokuna cake-acc skillfully make-neg-past 'Taro did not make any decent cake well.' As shown, while the sika phrase in (2a) occurs most naturally before a vP adverb, the other expressions,  and rokuna N in (2c), can occur on either side of this adverb.

Fragment answers
While Wh-MO, like all other NSIs, depends on the presence of negation, there is one way in which it differs from the other two: Wh-MO can occur in a fragment answer in the absence of the negative marker while still receiving a negative interpretation (as all n-words or NCIs do). The fragment answer daRE-MO 'who-MO' in (3) means 'nobody' and crucially not 'anybody' or 'somebody', clearly implying the presence of a negation without it being overtly present (cf. Nishioka 2000;Watanabe 2004). 2 (3) A: Dare-o mita no? who-acc see q 'Who did you see?' B: daRE-mo.
who-mo 'nobody' By contrast, as Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013) claim, XP-sika and rokuna cannot function as fragment answers in the absence of overt negation, based on examples like (4) and (5), a claim that we will show later on needs to be modified.
(4) A: Dare-o mita no? who-acc see q 'Who did you see?' nature of Japanese Art. 33, page 4 of 28 B: *John-sika.

Multiple occurrences
Along with adverbs and fragment answers, Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013) assess the possibility of multiple occurrences of NSIs. Multiple occurrences of Wh-MO and rokuna N are allowed with a single negative marker but those of XP-sika are not (cf. Aoyagi and Ishii 1994;Nishioka 2000;Kataoka 2006). c. *John-sika eigo-sika hanas-anakat-ta. John-sika English-sika speak-neg-past Int.: 'No one but John spoke anything but English.' Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra's (2013) analysis is based on the traditional distinction between Negative Concord Items (NCIs) and Negative Polarity Items (NPIs).

Analysis
(7) NCIs and NPIs • Negative Concord Items (syntactic negative dependencies): Dependencies where some particular element carries a particular formal uninterpretable negative feature ([uneg]) that must be checked by a formal interpretable negative feature that is present on the semantic negation. Since such an uninterpretable formal feature remains unchecked in a non-negative environment, such elements can only survive in the presence of a negative operator (cf. Ladusaw 1992;Zeijlstra 2004;; • Negative Polarity Items (semantic/pragmatic negative dependencies): Dependencies where a sentence containing a particular element is such that the semantic/pragmatic contribution of this sentence is only felicitous if this element is embedded in a negative contexts (cf. Kadmon & Landman 1993;Krifka 1995;Israel 1996;Lahiri 1998;Chierchia 2006); this is generally the case for minimizing Negative Polarity Items (NPIs).
This leads to a two-way distinction. However, Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013) propose a three-way distinction based on the behavior of NSIs we have observed.
(8) Three-way distinction for NSIs The major division is between Wh-MO on the one hand and XP-sika and rokuna N on the other. This is the distinction between NCIs and NPIs. Wh-MO is categorized as an NCI because it is able to occur in fragment answers, which is taken to indicate that it carries a [uneg] syntactic feature that invokes the presence of negation. Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013), following Zeijlstra (2004;, propose that the actual negation in a Strict Negative Concord language such as Japanese is a negative operator with an [ineg] feature. This negative operator occurs in Japanese in the vicinity of NegP, above vP and below TP (e.g., Miyagawa 2001;2010). The [uneg] feature on the Wh-MO invokes the presence of this negative operator in a fragment answer, thereby fulfilling the requirement of the [uneg] feature to enter into agreement and allowing Wh-MO to occur in fragment answers. Neither XP-sika nor rokuna N may occur in a fragment answer (but see later for a crucial exception with some instances of XP-sika). This led Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013) to categorize both as NPIs; as such they do not carry any syntactic designation of negation ([uneg]), hence they are dependent on a semantic negative environment to license them. The difference between these two NPIs is that XP-sika is inherently focused, so that it necessarily moves overtly out of vP, while rokuna N, only optionally being focused, may stay inside the vP. The focus feature on XP-sika also accounts for the inability of multiple XP-sika to occur in a clause. The focus feature triggers movement, which, for Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013), means that there is some sort of an agreement between a head that carries an [ufoc] feature and the [ifoc] feature on XP-sika. This agreement is subject to locality like any form of agreement; when there is multiple occurrence of XP-sika, the higher one blocks the lower XP-sika from entering into agreement with the [ufoc] probe.

(9) Locality and Focus
This reflects the idea, originally due to É. Kiss (1995), that there are languages in which discourse configurational features such as focus play a role similar to f-feature agreement in agreement-based languages. In a discourse configurational language, a discourse-configurational feature enters into a probe-goal relation, and the goal typically moves to the specifier of the head with the probe (Miyagawa 2010). Rokuna N and also the NCI Wh-MO do not carry an inherent focus feature; hence they are able to occur multiply within the same clause.
As noted, the focus feature in a language like Japanese behaves like f-feature agreement, which typically obeys locality. On the other hand, we saw that the negative feature allows multiple instances of agreement for Wh-MO. This is an indication that the [u/ineg] feature is distinct from focus/f-feature agreement, something that is more semantically based. We will see later that the focus feature requires activation just like the f-feature, something that we don't see with the negative feature.
Below, we will show that the categorization proposed in Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013) is not quite right: as it turns out, XP-sika belongs to the NCI group because, contrary to the data from Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013), there are instances of XP-sika that are fine in fragment answers. This means that XP-sika must be equipped with a [uneg] feature. Much of the paper will deal with why in some cases the XP-sika is fine in fragment answers, and in other cases it is not. Before doing so, we will introduce new data from Kumamoto Japanese, which provides further credence to the core observations in Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013).

Kumamoto Japanese: new evidence
In this section, we will present new data from the Kumamoto dialect of Japanese to support the core observations made in Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013) for standard Japanese. Kumamoto Japanese (KJ), which is spoken in Kyushu in southwestern Japan, is particularly helpful because it has an overt case-marking distinction to go with the kinds of semantic distinctions Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra observed in standard Japanese. Nishioka (to appear), following Kato (2007), argues that the case markers in KJ can indicate whether a phrase is within the vP or not, corresponding to the different interpretations. KJ is distinct in that it uses two nominative case markers -ga and -no, while only -ga is used in standard Japanese (SJ).
(SJ) weather-nom fine-prt 'Nice weather, isn't it?' b. Tenki-ga/-no yoka-ne. (KJ) weather-nom fine-prt 'Nice weather, isn't it?' Kato (2007) observes that the two nominative case markers in KJ differ in the positions in which they occur: (11) Nominative subject in KJ is expressed by the case marker -no if it is inside the vP and by -ga if it is outside, while in SJ it is expressed by -ga regardless of whether it is inside or outside the vP. (Kato 2007) Based on this observation, Nishioka demonstrates that the use of the -no nominative in KJ yields a non-topical, non-focus interpretation of the subject in thetic or "all-focus" (in Erteschik-Shir's terms) sentences as in (12), just like the readings of subjects in existential or impersonal constructions in Indo-European languages (cf. Kuroda 1992;Erteschik-Shir 2007). The sentence in (12a/a') describes an event in which the event itself is new/focused in the assumed situation and the one in (12b/b') is a typical existential sentence.
(SJ) b. Tsukue-no ue-ni hon-no aru (tai). (KJ) desk-gen top-on book-nom is (prt) 'There is a book on the desk.' b' Tsuke-no ue-ni hon-ga/*-no aru. (SJ) Nishioka also argues that the observation in (11) captures certain scopal facts illustrated in (13), which are consistent with Miyagawa's (2001) analysis of scrambling in Japanese. The universal subject with -ga must be located in Spec,TP, outside the vP. Consequently, it is outside the scope of negation under the assumption that NegP resides between the TP and vP in Japanese (Miyagawa 2001). In contrast, the subject with -no is inside the vP and must be inside the scope of negation.
(KJ) *not>all, all>not test-acc all-nom take-neg-past It follows that if an element occurs after the -no nominative subject in KJ, it must be inside the vP, while if it follows the -ga nominative subject, it can be outside the vP. The data in KJ indicate that XP-sika must be outside the vP, whereas Wh-MO and rokuna may stay inside the vP.
a. Kodomotati-ga/??-no terebi geimu-sika se-n nara mondai-tai. 3 children-nom TV game-sika play-neg if problem-prt 'If children play nothing but TV games, it is a problem.' b. Kodomotati-ga/-no nanMO waruka ko-ba se-n nara homete yaranan-yo. children-nom what-mo bad thing-acc do-neg if praise give-prt 'If children do nothing bad, you must praise them.' c. Tikagoro kodomotati-ga/-no rokuna koto-ba se-n ken nayamasika. recently children-nom rokuna thing-acc do-neg because annoying 'Since children recently do not any decent things, it's annoying. ' We see that XP-sika must occur outside of the vP because, as we saw in (14a), the sentence will be degraded if XP-sika follows a -no nominative, which is inside the vP. This is a clear indication that in Japanese, focus acts like agreement in entering into a probe-goal relation, and the goal must move to a position outside vP, to the specifier of the head that hosts the focus probe. Later, we will argue, following Miyagawa (2010), that this head that hosts the focus probe is T. In the sections to follow, we will use data from KJ to further support the new observations from SJ that we will introduce as part of a new analysis of NSIs in Japanese.
Before turning to the new data, one further issue based on the data from KJ is important to consider. What we observed is that XP-sika contains a [ifoc] feature that not only enters into agreement with an [ufoc] feature on some higher functional head, but that this agreement is syntactically active in triggering the movement of the XP with the [ifoc] feature to the specifier of the head that contains the [ufoc]. This "active" focus property of XP-sika led Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013) to distinguish XP-sika from rokuna and posit two types of NPIs in Japanese, one with inherent fosucs (XP-sika) and the other with only optional focus (rokuna). But if we step back from this data and look at the "active" focus property of XP-sika, we can see that it is a property that can also be present on elements that are not NSIs; it is a general property of Japanese as a discourse-configurational language. We can see this below with another focus marker, XP-sae 'XP-even', which is not an NSI.
(15) Taroo-ga {?*umaku} supeingo-sae {umaku} hanas-e-ta node tasukatta. Taro-nom skillfully Spanish-sae skillfully speak-can-past becuase helpful 'It was helpful that Taro was able to speak even Spanish so well.' As shown, the focus item XP-sae triggers agreement and movement, and this item is not an NCI as shown by the absence of negation in the sentence. We can also see the obligatory movement triggered by the active focus item in the KJ example below. (16) Taroo-ga/-*no supeingo-sae hanas-e-ta ken tasukatta. Taro-nom Spanish-sae speak-can-past because helpful 'It was helpful that Taro was able to speak even Spanish.' What the above discussion indicates is that the active focus feature that triggers movement is not particular to NSIs, but rather, it is a general property of a discourse-configurational language such as Japanese. In other words, this focus property should not play a role in characterizing NSIs. From this standpoint, Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra's (2013) tripartite categorization of NSIs should simply reduce to a bipartite NCI/NPI division. In the remainder of this paper, we will, however, look at new data that indicate that, contrary to what Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013) have argued, XP-sika should be categorized as an NCI, and not as an NPI. Recall that our rational for placing XP-sika and rokuna N in the NPI group is that they are incapable of occurring in fragment answers. This was taken as a diagnostic that these lack a feature [uneg], the feature that is present on NCIs. However, it turns out that there are cases in which the XP-sika may constitute a fragment answer. The issue of when it may, and when it may not, occur in fragment answers comes down to the property of focus; as we will see, what we will observe gives further credence to the idea that "active" focus should not be part of characterizing NSIs. Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013)  What is the difference between these grammatical XP-sika fragment answers and the ungrammatical one we adopted from Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013) earlier? The distinction appears to be one of argument versus adjunct: argument XP-sika cannot occur in fragment answers while adjunct XP-sika may do so. Adjunct XP-sika is thus similar to Wh-MO, both being able to constitute fragment answers without overt negation. The following illustrates this with natu-sika 'summer-sika' as an adjunct and as an argument. 4 (23)

New data: adjunct XP-sika
A: Okinawa-de-wa haru-to natu(-ni) oyog-eru no? Okinawa-in-top spring-and summer(-in) swim-can q 'Can you swim in spring and summer in Okinawa?' In (23), 'spring and summer' is an adverb, thus an adjunct, so that 'summer-sika' is fine as a fragment answer. In contrast, in (24), 'spring and summer' is the object of the verb 'like', hence 'summer-sika' in the fragment answer is an argument and therefore ungrammatical.
If we are to use the categorization in Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra based on the above observation, argument XP-sika should be considered an NPI, while adjunct XP-sika should be an NCI. But that cannot be correct, since it is sika that renders this item an NSI, and whether the XP is argument or not should make no difference as far as the NSI status of this construction is concerned. Hence the question arises as to how this distinction can be explained in a coherent manner. Before going further with this discussion, let us first look at the behavior of adjunct XP-sika with respect to the other two tests, the vP-internal/ external test and the multiple-occurrence test, in order to see whether these facts are related.
Recall that an argument XP-sika must move out of vP. The SJ and KJ examples are repeated below.
(25) a. Taroo-wa { * umaku} keeki-sika {umaku} tukur-anakat-ta. (= (2a)) (SJ) Taro-top skillfully cake-sika skillfully make-neg-past 'Taro only made cake well.' b. Kodomotati-ga/??-no terebi geimu-sika se-n nara mondai-tai. (= (14a)) (KJ) children-nom TV game-sika play-neg if problem-prt 'If children play nothing but TV games, it is a problem.' In the SJ example in (25a), argument XP-sika 'cake-only' cannot occur after the vP adverb 'skillfully', showing that it must obligatorily move out of vP. Also, in the KJ example in (25b), the nominative -no, which forces the subject to be in vP, is not allowed before the argument XP-sika 'game-only', again showing that the argument XP-sika occurs outside of vP. In sharp contrast, an adjunct XP-sika may occur inside the vP. The following examples from KJ also show that an adjunct XP-sika may occur after a subject marked by the -no nominative case marker. (27) a. Tegami-no ittuu-sika kito-ran.
(KJ) letter-nom one cls-sika come-neg 'Only one letter has come.' b. Suupaa-no kon mati-ni-sika naka ken minna kokoni kutto-tai. (KJ) supermarket-nom this town-in-sika be-neg because everyone here come-prt 'Since there is a supermarket only in this town, everyone comes here.' As for the multiple-occurrence test, we observed that the argument XP-sika is the one NSI among the three types that does not allow multiple occurrence within the same clause. Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013) attributed this to the fact that the XP-sika has an "active" focus feature that enters into agreement with a focus probe; multiple occurrences of XP-sika would be blocked due to locality. What about the adjunct XP-sika? As one might expect by now, adjunct XP-sika behaves differently in allowing multiple occurrence, either in combination with an argument XP-sika or in multiple occurrence of adjunct XP-sika.
(28) a. ?John-sika sono kuni-e-wa itido-sika it-ta koto-ga nai. John-sika that country-to-top one time-sika go-past experience-nom neg 'Only John has an experience of visiting that country just once.' b. Karaoke-e-wa itido-sika Shiori-to-sika it-ta koto-ga nai. karaoke-to-top one time-sika Shiori-with-sika go-past experience-nom neg 'I have been to karaoke only once, only with Shiori.' In (28a), the XP-sika 'John-sika' is an argument while the second XP-sika 'one time-sika' is an adjunct. In (28b), both XP-sika are adjuncts.
The fact that the adjunct XP-sika can occur in fragment answers is an indication that XP-sika is an NCI with the [uneg] feature. Because the -sika portion is furnishing the [uneg] feature, the NCI status of XP-sika should not matter whether the XP is an adjunct or an argument. Thus, the most natural categorization is as follows, contrary to Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013). (29) NCI: Wh-MO, XP-sika NPI: rokuna N This is all that we need to say about these NSIs. But now, how do we deal with the inability of the argument XP-sika to occur in fragment answers? It must be due to a property independent of the XP-sika being an NCI. The fact that an adjunct XP-sika is able to stay inside vP, and also that there can be a multiple occurrence, suggest that the issue here has to do with the focus feature. Somehow, the focus feature on argument XP-sika is syntactically active, while the same feature is syntactically inert in an adjunct XP-sika. We will present an analysis of the focus feature that predicts this difference by extending the framework in Miyagawa (2010). But before we do so, let us look briefly at the remaining NPI, rokuna N.

NPI rokuna N
Our new categorization of NSIs in Japanese has isolated rokuna N as the sole type of NPI. As such, this NSI depends strictly on the appropriate semantic environment induced by negation to survive. It is not like the NCIs, which have a [uneg] feature that enters into an agreement with the negative OP that carries the [ineg] feature; once the agreement is established, an NCI may move out of the c-commanding domain of the negative operator, as we will see. In contrast, rokuna N, as an NPI, is strictly dependent on the surface scopal domain; unless there is some independent factor that would allow it to move out of this domain but is able to reconstruct, we would expect the NPI always to occur in the domain of the negative OP. We established earlier that multiple occurrence of rokuna N is possible. However, sentences involving multiple rokuna are degraded in some cases (30a) but not in others, as we saw earlier and can similarly be observed in (30b) below.
(30) (Kataoka 2006: 146) a. ???Rokuna gakusei-ga gengogakkai-de rokuna happyo-o rokuna students-nom linguistics conference-at rokuna presentation-acc si-nakat-ta. do-neg-past 'No decent students presented any decent papers at the linguistic conference.' b. Taroo-wa rokuna mono-o rokuna mise-de kaw-anakat-ta. Taro-top rokuna thing-acc rokuna store-at buy-neg-past 'Taro didn't buy any decent things at any decent shops.' The contrast between (30a) and (30b) can be naturally explained if we consider rokuna as a plain NPI that must occur inside the scope of negation at LF. 5 This is consistent with the grammaticality of (30b), where it is inside the vP at surface structure and thus below negation. In contrast, in (30a), it is the subject that occupies Spec,TP, a position outside NegP (Miyagawa 2001). Hence, the NPI in this example appears in a position outside the scope of negation. We can confirm this by the use of the nominative -no in KJ in (31). In (31a), rokuna N is marked with -no, indicating that it is inside the vP and therefore inside the scope of negation, while rokuna N in (31b) has -ga, denoting that it is in Spec,TP and therefore in a position above negation. As it is a general property of most NPIs that they must already appear in a position below their licensers at surface structure (Ladusaw 1979), the degradedness of (30a/31b) immediately follows.
The fact that rokuna N is an NPI is further confirmed by the ungrammaticality of the sentences in (32). Rokuna N appears sentence-initially as the topic of the sentence in (32a), and the rokuna N subject precedes the speaker-oriented adverb in (32b), both occupying positions higher than NegP. 5 The sentence in (ia), in which rokuna N object is scrambled to the initial position, is grammatical, unlike (30a). This is because the possibility of A'-scrambling remains in (ia), and then rokuna N is interpreted in the vP (reconstruction), being in the scope of negation. In contrast, the subject rokuna N in (30a) has undergone A-movement to Spec,T and cannot be interpreted in the scope of negation (no reconstruction effects in A-movement, cf. Chomsky 1995). b. *Rokuna gakusei-ga huun'ni kyoo-no zyugyoo-ni syusseki-nakat-ta. rokuna student-nom unfortunately today's class-to attend-neg-pres 'Unfortunately no decent students attended today's class.' Wh-MO and XP-sika crucially differ from rokuna and can appear before a sentential adverb, suggesting again that they are not plain NPIs like rokuna N.

The licensing mechanism of NCIs and other assumptions
In this section, we spell out the assumptions that are adopted for our explanation of the different behaviors of NCIs in Japanese. First, we briefly argue that negative concord (the licensing of NCIs), unlike the checking of plain NPIs (cf. Kadmon & Landman 1993; Chierchia 2013 among others), can be taken as an instance of agreement involving feature-checking relations between uninterpretable and interpretable negative features (6.1). Second, we contend that negative feature checking is not the only instance of syntactic agreement involved in the domain of NSIs. Following Miyagawa (2010), we take focus raising into TP to be an instance of feature checking as well (in the same vein as φ-feature checking triggering subject raising into Spec,TP) (6.2). And just as (movement triggered by) a f-probe is dependent on an unchecked case feature on the goal, we argue that for an NSI to raise into Spec,TP, it should also be equipped with an unchecked case feature (6.3).

Licensing of NCIs
We assume, as Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013) and references therein propose, that a type of Agree, which can be called "Upward Agree," should be adopted for the analysis of NCIs, following Zeijlstra (2004;2012), Bjorkman and Zeijlstra (2014), and Haegeman and Lohndal (2010). Under this analysis, the sentential negative head (na) is also taken to bear an uninterpretable negative feature ([uneg]), as do NCIs, while a covert negative operator with an interpretable negative feature ([ineg]) is assumed in Spec,NegP. This is schematically represented in (34).
The direction of this Agree is the opposite of the standard Agree (Chomsky 2000; in that (multiple) probes (elements with [uneg]) are c-commanded by a goal (Op), that is, Agree applies upward here. The advantage of this analysis is that single negation meaning is accommodated straightforwardly without assuming any instance of semantic resumption, such as Neg-Factorization (Haegeman and Zanuttini 1996) or negative quantifier resumption (De Swart & Sag 2002), both operations lacking strong motivation (cf. HeddeZeijlstra 2004; Giannakidou 2006 for discussion). The locality between NCIs and the negative marker na results from the locality of the application of Agree between NCIs and the abstract negative operator Op (given that agreement is in principle clause bound). However, as the negative head is necessary to identify a covert Op in its specifier and be licensed by it, the locality indirectly holds between NCIs and the neg head. This is why both Wh-MO and XP-sika, regardless of whether they are arguments or adjuncts, require the presence of a clause-mate NEG head (na) in Japanese. It is also why the negative head can be elided under ellipsis (as it is semantically vacuous itself, and does not violate the condition that the antecedent of the elided part must meet semantic equivalence).

Raising argument XP-sika into Spec,TP
Taking Chomsky (2008) and Richards (2007) as a starting point, Miyagawa (2010) assumes that the f-feature probe starts out in C and, in languages such as English, it is inherited by T. Miyagawa argues that this holds not only for f-features but also for discourse features such as the focus probe. Thus, for Miyagawa (2010), both f-feature probes and the discourse features (topic or focus) start out in C and may be inherited by T. 6 In a f-agreement based language such as English, the f-feature probe is inherited by T. In discourse-configurational languages, however, depending on the language, either only a topic feature or a focus feature can function as a discourse-configurational feature (É. Kiss 1995), or, as in Japanese (as well as many other languages), both types of features can be inherited by C and probe in T.

(36) Agreement-based languages
In languages where f-features are inherited by T, the presence of f-agreement on T triggers movement of a nominal with matching interpretable f-features to Spec,TP. In contrast, in a discourse-configurational language such as Japanese, topic and/or focus features are inherited by T, therefore triggering movement of a topic or focused element to Spec,TP.
(37) Discourse-configurational languages We will first provide three sets of examples to demonstrate that in Japanese topical and/ or focused arguments indeed can raise into Spec,TP, irrespective of whether they are subjects or objects.
In the Japanese SOV order, the preferred reading is for the universal quantifier in the subject position in a negated clause is to take wide scope over negation (Kato 1988;Miyagawa 2001). 7 (38) Zen'in-ga siken-o uke-nakat-ta. all-nom test-acc take-neg-past 'All did not take the test.' all > not, */??not > all This is taken to indicate that the subject has moved to Spec,TP, outside the scope of negation. In contrast, if the object scrambles across the subject, the universal-quantifier subject in the OSV order can be interpreted inside and outside the scope of negation (Miyagawa 2001).

(39)
Siken-o i zen'in-ga t i uke-nakat-ta. test-acc all-nom take-neg-past 'Test, all didn't take.' all > not, not > all This directly follows if the object 'test-acc' has moved to Spec,TP, which forces the subject 'all' to stay in-situ in Spec,vP, which makes the partial negation interpretation possible. (Note that the other interpretation of "all > not" is due to a different derivation according to Miyagawa (2001). These scopal facts are evidently observed by the KJ data in (13), repeated as (40). (40) a. Zen'in-ga/*-no siken-ba uke-ndat-ta.
(KJ) *not>all, all>not test-acc all-nom take-neg-past Recall that KJ has two nominative markers, -ga, which occurs outside of vP, and -no, which occurs inside vP. The -ga subject is used in the SOV order in (40a) while -no subject is used in the OSV order in (40b), where the object moves to Spec,TP and the subject remains in Spec,vP. In (40c) the subject moves to Spec,TP and the object moves to a higher position by scrambling. Thus KJ provides indisputable evidence for the above argument in terms 7 The judgments are based on default prosody in which the sentential stress falls on the object in the SOV order and on the subject in the OSV order. See Saito (2006) for a critique of Miyagawa (2001), and a response to his critique Miyagawa (2010). See also Koizumi and Tamaoka (2010) for experimental evidence in support of the conclusions drawn in Miyagawa (2001;2010).
of the possibilities of partial negation in SJ. Note that the ill-formedness of -no subject in (40a) suggests that something must occupy Spec,TP in the matrix clause and the object occupies in (40b) (see fn3). KJ data below clearly exhibits that Spec,TP is occupied by the locative phrase 'on the desk' in (41a) as in (41b) and implicit spatio-temporal topic in the sense of Erteschik-Shir (1997;) (Nishioka to appear) in (42a), which is a thetic sentence, as in (42b). These data are naturally accommodated by taking into consideration the discourse-configurational property of Japanese.
Second, recall that multiple occurrence of argument XP-sika is not allowed, while adjunct XP-sika allows it (including the combination of argument and adjunct XP-sika).
(43) a. *John-sika eigo-sika hanas-anakat-ta. (=(6c)) John-sika English-sika speak-neg-past Int.: 'No one but John spoke anything but English.' b. Karaoke-e-wa itido-sika Shiori-to-sika it-ta koto-ga nai. (=(28b)) karaoke-to-top one time-sika Shiori-with-sika go-past experience-nom neg 'I have been to karaoke only once, only with Shiori.' As stated earlier, the restriction against multiple occurrence of argument XP-sika is due to locality: we follow Miyagawa, Nishioka, and Zeijlstra (2013) in assuming that XP-sika always has an interpretable focus feature ([ifoc]) (as part of the lexical representation). Of the three NSIs that we discuss in this article, only XP-sika has this feature because it is the only one with a semantically relevant focus property given its exceptive semantics (as noted in the literature). This [ifoc] enters into agreement with an uninterpretable [ufoc] feature. Given the evidence provided above, it turns out that the head that hosts this [ufoc] the probe, must be T, a head that we argue has inherited this feature from C (cf, Miyagawa 2010).

(44)
The local nature of the focus probe-goal agreement What is apparent is that focus-agreement, followed by movement, involving argument XPsika is obligatory in Japanese; otherwise multiple occurrence should be possible, with one or more of the argument XP-sika not entering into agreement. One way to put it is that the [ifoc] feature on an argument XP-sika must be both syntactically and semantically active.
In contrast, if the XP-sika is an adjunct, it presumably carries the same [ifoc] feature (also evidenced by its exceptive meaning contribution), giving rise to the same semantic effects, but at the same time this feature must be syntactically inert and does not enter into focus-agreement of any kind. Even if there is an [ufoc] feature, as is the case below with an example repeated from earlier that contains an argument XP-sika, the adjunct XP-sika cannot enter into agreement with this [ufoc].
(45) ?John-sika sono kuni-e-wa itido-sika it-ta koto-ga nai. (=(28a)) John-sika that country-to-top one time-sika go-past experience-nom neg 'Only John has an experience of visiting that country just once.' The argument XP-sika 'John-sika' has an active [ifoc], and it enters into agreement with the [ufoc] probe at T. The fact that the second XP-sika 'one time-sika' is grammatical indicates that this second XP-sika does not enter into agreement with the probe. Otherwise both XP-sika's would raising to Spec,TP. This shows that adjunct XP-sika does not participate in any instance of focus-agreement.
Hence what we is that argument XP-sika carries a feature [ifoc] that obligatorily triggers it to agree with the T-head and raise into its specifier position, whereas adjunct XP-sika, despite carrying the same feature [ifoc] cannot participate in such agreement relations. Below, we turn to how we can account for the "active" and "inert" [ifoc] features in the argument and adjunct XP-sika.

Case
We begin with the standard assumption that one major difference between arguments and adjuncts is the fact that only the former carry case features. In current minimalism, uninterpretable case features render DPs/NPs active for agreement and thus for movement to the specifier position of the probing head (cf. Chomsky 2000;Baker 2008). Unchecked case features render the nominal visible for the higher probe. This is also the case in systems of Upward Agree, in which the presence of a case (or other uninterpretable) feature enables lower NPs/DPs to establish an agreement relation with a higher probe, followed by movement (cf. Bjorkman and Zeijlstra 2014), 8 or in post-syntactic approaches to agreement, where morphological case is a necessary condition for f-agreement (cf. Bobaljik 2008). Now, in a discourse configurational language such as Japanese, discourse configurational features such as focus play a role equivalent to f-features in an agreement-based language. A reasonable assumption is that focus in a discourse configurational language requires case for activation. On this assumption, the derivations of sentences with argument XP-sika phrases can be illustrated as below (with the details of irrelevant parts ignored).  This activation condition is, in principle, the same mechanism as case activation for f-probe. One crucial difference, something that is important for languages such as Tagalog and Japanese, is that this case agreement allows T to establish case agreement between T and the object with accusative case. In all of the instances of case agreement in Tagalog, including the accusative and the dative, it is a relation between T and the topicalized phrase. But how does the accusative case "agreement" get established between T and the object? The relevant head here is the small v for case checking. We assume that in Japanese and in Tagalog, v incorporates into T (cf. Miyagawa 2001), so that the accusative case on v is associated with T. Note that our analysis predicts that this activation condition is not limited to XP-sika, but to any other focus item with the syntactically relevant [ifoc]. For example, we saw earlier that XP-sae 'XP-even', which is not an NSI, nevertheless must move out of vP. (52) Taroo-ga {?*umaku} supeingo-sae {umaku} hanas-e-ta node tasukatta. (=(15)) Taro-nom skillfully Spanish-sae skillfully speak-can-past because helpful 'It was helpful that Taro was able to speak even Spanish so well.' Note that this XP-sae is an argument. An adjunct XP-sae is fine staying in the vP, as shown below, showing that the [ifoc] feature is only activated if it occurs on an argument.
Hanako-wa {umaku} Taroo-to-sae {umaku} odotta. Hanako-TOP skillfully Taro-with-even skillfully danced 'Hanako danced nicely even with Taro.' Taking (51) as our basis, the differences among the various kinds and types of NSIs naturally follow, as we demonstrate in the next section.

Analysis of fragment answers
Let us now look at fragment answers. As exemplified in (54) Here we base our proposal on Merchant's (2004) analysis of fragment answers that parallels his analysis of sluicing. The fragment moves to a high position for focus, and TP is then elided. The negative feature on the NCI has been checked (by Upward Agree) prior to this instance of movement, so no ungrammaticality is expected to arise at this point. On the other hand, the ungrammaticality of the fragment with rokuna N in (54d) follows clearly from its plain NPI status. In general, plain NPIs cannot occur as fragments, as shown in (55).
(55) A: What did you eat?
Following Zeijlstra (2004), the reason for this is that NCIs carry some feature [uneg] that can trigger the presence of an abstract negative operator carrying [ineg], but NPIs crucially lack such a negative feature (cf. Kadmon & Landman 1993; Chierchia 2013 among others). One of the reasons for this is that a NCI must always be licensed within a proper syntactic agreement domain (it is clause-bound, and island-sensitive, whereas NPI licensing is not). Consequently, they can only survive in a sentence that is independently marked for negation, and fragment answers are not. Following the analysis he developed for sluicing (Merchant 2001; see also van Riemsdijk 1978;Chao 1987;Lobeck 1991;Chung et al. 1995;Ginzburg and Sag 2000;Lasnik 2001), Merchant (2004) proposes that fragment answers have a fully sentential syntactic structure. For the fragment answer in (56b), Merchant assumes a full sentence as in (56c), with a structure as illustrated in (57) The two arguments he provides for this full syntactic structure are both drawn from his motivation for the same approach for sluicing: case matching and P-stranding. The fragment answer with case must match the case assigned by the verb. This is shown below in German (Hankamer 1979 As illustrated, the fragment answer, which is the object, must match its case marker according to the verb that selects it: dative for folgt 'follow' and accusative for sucht 'seek'. This suggests that there is a full structure that is unpronounced, predicting the case form of the fragment. Languages that allow P-stranding, such as English and Swedish, likewise allow fragment answers with P stranded, while languages that do not, such as Greek and German, require P to occur with the fragment answer. On the other hand, an adjunct XP-sika does not enter into focus/case agreement with T, so it should in principle be free to move to the Spec,FP, allowing the TP to be elided and form a grammatical fragment answer. This FP is a structure that occurs presumably universally in constructions that contain ellipsis such as the fragment answer (and sluicing), and movement into FP is arguably separated from the [ufoc] feature that in discourse configurational languages originates in C, and gets inherited by T. Unlike the T carrying a [ufoc] feature, this head of FP requires some XP to occur in in its specifier (potentially a result of some edge or EPP-feature present on P). This is why an adjunct XP-sika can occur in a fragment answer.
The other NCI that can occur is Wh-MO, which does not have an inherent [ifoc] feature. Therefore, the same reason holds for its grammaticality as a fragment as an adjunct XP-sika.
However, one question now arises: if movement from Spec,TP into Spec,FP is forbidden, what is the source for the bare DP fragment answers such as the following, where a focused subject does appear in a fragment answer? Prima facie, our proposal should forbid such instances of movement, as it does for argument XP-sika. One possibility is that just like Wh-MO and adjunct XP-sika, a bare argument DP does not have any inherent [ifoc] feature, so that it is able to move to Spec,FP and occur as a fragment answer. (iii) A: Kimi-wa nando Amerika-ni itta no? you-top how.many.times America-to went Q 'How many times have you been to America?' B: Itido-sika. 'only once' For the counterexample pointed out by the reviewer with iya, we can only speculate on why it is grammatical. If our analysis is on the right track, the presence of iya is possibly furnishing a focus feature at C, either by preventing this feature from being inherited by T or, more likely, by having a second focus feature be present at C to match the focus feature on iya, while the "regular" focus feature is inherited by T. Attempting to come up with a comprehensive analysis of this interesting phenomenon with iya is beyond the scope of this paper, but clearly, it provides one concrete direction for future research.
Hanako (cop) To sum up what we discussed in this subsection, once it is presumed that focused elements cannot move out of Spec,TP to some higher Spec,FP that is the landing side for fragment answers, it follows that, of the NCIs discussed, only Wh-MO and adjunct XP-sika can appear in such positions, where as argument XP-sika and NPI rokuna can't.

Concluding remarks
We have argued for a new classification of the three NSIs in Japanese, Wh-MO, XP-sika, and rokuna N, based on new data that clearly highlight the necessity of dividing XP-sika into arguments and adjuncts. We showed that this distinction between argument and adjunct XP-sika follows directly from the discourse configurational nature of Japanese, which requires the discourse configurational feature, focus, to be activated. The activation is implemented by Case, thus showing the direct parallel with f-feature agreement, something predicted by Strong Uniformity. By taking consideration of focus out of the equation for classification of NSIs, we regain the traditional twofold classification of NSIs: NCIs and NPIs. We have demonstrated that their distribution is naturally derived by an independently supported mechanism that incorporates "Upward Agree" (Zeijlstra 2012;Bjorkman and Zeijlstra 2014), focus inheritance of "strong uniformity" (Miyagawa 2010), an activation condition in terms of case (which is widely adopted and reconfirmed for discourse-configurational languages by Rackowski 2002), and PF-deletion analysis of (Merchant 2004). Thus, our results mutually support their individual proposals.