It is well-known that not may have scope over the universally quantified subject, even though it cannot c-command the subject. When surface structure does not correspond to logical form, we can resort to such scope-shifting operations as QR or reconstruction. However, I propose that those syntactic operations do not work for the relative scope of negation. Instead, I argue that a relational analysis of negation enables us to explain the phenomena without recourse to those syntactic operations. That is, I claim that not takes VP as a first argument and the subject as a second argument, negating the relation between the two arguments.

This paper purposes to solve the tricky problems with scope readings by applying May`s (1985) Path Containment Condition (PCC) and Chomsky`s (2000) Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC) to sentences involving quantifiers and wh-phrases. Contradictory discussions have ensued in connection with scope readings. This paper shows how such problems can be solved with the application of the concept of path and phase presented by May and Chomsky. In order to verify that the PCC and PIC are crucial to the reading of scope ambiguity, this paper covers not only the sentences involving double object predicates and quantifiers, which have been regarded as a more tricky issue, but also other sentences containing complementizers and quantifiers. By employing the notion of path and phase in a unified way, this paper shows that m-command, not c-command, should be employed in deciding scope and its readings.

This paper aims to examine the logical and semantic meanings of wh-movement in English, by taking up individual and pair-list readings available in a sentence in which a quantifier like everyone is contained. Not following the movement hypotheses, I instead take the argument by Rooth (1992, 1996) and Ramchand (1996). I assume that a wh-phrase is contrastive-focused and a contrastive-focused phrase provides a set of relevant things, which contains the meaning of wh-questions. I claim that to derive a correct meaning related to scope of wh-phrases, wh-movement is not necessarily required. This paper also considers the syntactic-semantic derivations of wh-questions in English, to find out an alternative method of the interpretations of wh-phrases.