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Abstract Abstract: Cross-linguistic data show that there are at least two types of negation-sensitive items in human language—negative concord items and negative polarity items. Partially acknowledging Watanabe’s(2004) and Kataoka’s(2007) relevant achievements and taking evidence from other languages, this article reanalyzes the syntactic and semantic characteristics of wh+mo in Japanese and finally solves two Kataoka’s remaining problems. The analysis indicates that wh+mo is not negative polarity item or universal quantifier as traditionally recognized. Instead, it is a negative concord item eliminating inherent negativity in usage. Besides, wh+mo still can be semantically licensed across an indicative clause boundary in the condition of downward-entailment, even though it will be interpreted as a universal quantifier and bounded in a clause. In this sense, the paper brings more evidence for the existence of negative concord phenomenon in Japanese.
Key words：negative concord; negative polarity; wh+mo; quantificational meaning; long-distance licensing
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