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In Japanese, word order is flexible: the verb must come at the end of the sentence, but the order of the other phrases are free. For example, all the sentences in (1) are perfectly grammatical and mean virtually the same. (1)  a. Taroo-ga ano mise-de hon-o  katta (koto) Taro-Nom that store-at book-Ace bought “Taro bought a book at that store” b. Hon-o  Taroo-ga ano mise-de katta (koto) book-Acc Taro-Nom that store-at bought c. Ano mise-de Taroo-ga  hon-o  katta book-Acc Taro-Nom that store-at bought d. Hon-o  ano mise-de Taroo-ga  katta (koto) book-Acc that store-at Taro-Nom bought e. Taroo-ga  hon-o  ano mise-de katta (koto) Taro-Nom book-Acc that store-at bought f. Ano mise-de hon-o  Taroo-ga katta (koto) that store-at book-Acc Taro-Nom bought The flexible word order phenomenon has been one of the major issues in Japanese linguistics in conjunction not only with the theory of movement but also with phrase structure and Case assignment, among others. In this chapter, we consider two basic questions regarding the flexible word order phenomenon: (i) are all the sentences (1a–f) base-generated or are (1b–f) derived from (la) by movement?; (ii) if the word order change in (1) is due to movement, what kind of characteristic does this movement exhibit? We first examine whether any of the orders in (1) can be considered as the basic order in Japanese. In the early 1980s, ... log in or subscribe to read full text