This article examines syntactic and semantic properties of free choice items (FCIs) in Japanese. It is argued that Japanese FCIs, which have been considered to have a wh-item and a scalar focus particle demo, actually involve a clausal structure, which contains a null subject, a copula, and a subjunctive modal/mood. This proposal explains a number of puzzling issues regarding their distribution as FCIs compared with those in other languages. A compositional semantic analysis of Japanese FCIs is then proposed based on this morpho-syntactic decomposition; the Japanese free choice items are essentially analyzed as unconditionals, and it is shown that the subjunctive mood plays a crucial role in deriving relevant interpretations (in particular, counterfactuality, an ignorance inference, and an indifference inference) in the spirit of Izvorski (2000). This article also discusses a number of extensions and implications of the proposal: correspondence of different wh-items to different atomic levels in Condoravdi’s (2015) individuation scheme, scalarity of Japanese FCIs, the typology of FC expressions, and connection to correlative constructions. In addition, this article addresses some issues regarding licensing contexts of Japanese FCIs, an existential-like interpretation obtained in the presence of the phrase ii-kara ‘good-because’ in imperatives, anti-episodicity, subtrigging, the so-called Canasta scenario, and partitives.

本文研究了日语自由选择项（FCI）的句法和语义属性。有人认为，日本的FCI已被视为具有泛白和标量焦点粒子演示实际上包含一个从句结构，其中包含一个空主题，一个系词和一个虚拟语气/语气。与其他语言相比，该提案解释了许多有关将其作为FCI进行分发的令人困惑的问题。在此基础上，提出了日语FCI的成分语义分析。日本的自由选择项实质上被视为无条件的，并且表明，虚拟语气在依兹沃斯基（2000）的精神中推导相关的解释（尤其是反事实，无知的推论和冷漠的推论）中起着至关重要的作用。 。本文还讨论了该提案的许多扩展和含义：在Condoravdi（2015）的个性化方案中，不同的项目对应于不同的原子水平，日本FCI的标量，FC表达式的类型以及与相关结构的联系。此外，本文还讨论了与日本FCI的许可环境有关的一些问题，这是在存在该短语的情况下获得的类似于存在的解释ii-kara在命令，反突发性，超触发，所谓的Canasta情景和分词中表现为“良好”。