This paper provides some evidence for the non-movement hypothesis that Japanese nominals are licensed in situ and do not undergo movement for Case-feature checking (Fukui 1986,Takano 1996,Ikawa 1997,and Fukui and Takano 1998). We focus on three scopal contrasts between English and Japanese : (i) scope rigidity in Japanese, (ii) distribution of Negative Polarity Items (henceforth NPIs) and Positive Polarity Items (henceforth PPIs) in negative sentences, and (iii) lack of scope ambiguity between an o-marked Accusative object and a Postpositional phrase in Japanese. Those facts are simultaneously accounted for by the assumption that Japanese nominals undergo no movement from a theta-position to a Case-checking position. This leads one to conclude that Japanese has no Agr projection
