(4) NP2-gai (NP1-{ni/niyotte}) t_i V-rare

(5) There are items in Japanese, like English and other languages, that bear a feature responsible for agreement/checking; and agreement/checking plays a central role in the generation of Japanese sentences.

(6) No items in Japanese bear a feature that is responsible for agreement/checking, and hence agreement/checking plays no role in Japanese, unlike English and other languages.

The choice between (5) and (6) in regard to passives in Japanese should thus be contingent upon (i) whether Japanese passives involve movement as indicated in (4), and (ii), if they do, whether the movement has properties of A-movement or 'scrambling'

For those familiar with the literature on scrambling, this disjunction might appear to be somewhat puzzling. After all, they might point out, "Can (at least, clause-internal) scrambling not be an instance of A-movement, anyway?" My response to that question is actually given in the abstract, although not totally directly, but in a fairly transparent way; it is claimed/pointed out in the abstract that the reconstruction effects in scrambling in JP are not the same as those in what is analyzed as involving A-movement in English. Actual examples illustrating the point, including (7)-(9) in the abstract (along with some 'scrambling examples') will be given at the talk.