We investigate the syntax of verb-echo answers in Japanese. We first present two arguments showing that this answer form is best analyzed through overt V-to-T-to-C movement, followed by TP-ellipsis. We further show that verb-echo answers exhibit a scope reversal effect: the otherwise robust wide scope reading of focus-marked phrases with respect to negation is reversed in this construction, a pattern that holds across all grammatical positions. This ubiquitous scope reversal pattern indicates that certain instances of head movement in Japanese are syntactic, contrary to the view ( Chomsky 2000 , 2001 ) that head move-ment is to be relegated to the postsyntactic, phonological component.

We propose here a new PF account of the that -trace effect. Adopting the phase-based theory of the syntax-phonology interface and independent principles of prosodic restructuring, we propose that the complementizer that cannot form a prosodic phrase on its own. We show that this analysis straightforwardly derives the core paradigm surrounding the that -trace effect and its well-documented exceptions triggered by focus, adverbs, parentheticals, resumption, and right node raising. We further argue that the relevant prosodic condition can be derived from the interaction of the Lexical Category Condition ( Truckenbrodt 1999 ) with Prosodic Vacuity ( Kandybowicz 2015 ), within the Match Theory of syntax-prosody correspondence ( Selkirk 2011 ).