This paper describes the use of the expression nai?tameni in Japanese, by using the “Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese（BCCWJ）”（the monitor version in 2008）. The tameni clause in Japanese has a “purpose” interpretation, which is determined by the controllability of the predicate that precedes tameni. In this sense, nai?tameni is a non?canonical expression, because the negative nai is a sort of stative predicate, and not a controllable one. This paper shows the variations of the nai?tameni construction in the BCCWJ, and analyzes this phenomenon from the following four viewpoints : (1) the frequency in the BCCWJ ; (2) the occurrence of the following particles ; (3) the properties of the preceding verbs of nai?tameni ; and (4) the mismatch of the agents of the main and subordinate clauses
