Intervention Effects are Focus Effects

Abstract

Beck (1996) and Beck & Kim (1997) discuss the interaction between wh-insitu and negation and other quantifiers and propose the Minimal Quantified Structure Constraint (MQSC) which basically says that an intervening quantifier blocks LF movement of wh-in-situ (I will call this type of blocking effect an “Intervention Effect”, following terminology of Hagstrom 1998 and Pesetsky 1999). In this paper, I will show that the MQSC is too strong a constraint in the sense that not every quantifier seems to show the Intervention Effect in Korean. Analyzing negative polarity items in Korean as focus phrases, I argue that what produces an Intervention Effect is not negation or quantifiers in general, but rather focus phrases. Assuming with Reinhart (1998) that the

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