Locality in Syntax and Floating Numeral Quantifiers

We defend the idea that a floating quantifier observes syntactic locality with its associated noun phrase. This idea has given rise to a number of important empirical insights, including the VP-internal subject position, intermediate traces, and NP-traces. Recently, this syntactic locality of floating quantifiers has been questioned in a number of languages. We take up evidence from Japanese that purports to disprove the locality requirements on floating numeral quantifiers and their associated NP, and we demonstrate that the arguments in fact give evidence for syntactic locality, not against it. Our conclusions suggest that evidence against the locality of floating quantifiers given in other languages should be reexamined.