The Relative Scope of Negation:

It is well-known that not may have scope over the universally quantified subject, even though it cannot c-command the subject. When surface structure does not correspond to logical form, we can resort to such scope-shifting operations as QR or reconstruction. However, I propose that those syntactic operations do not work for the relative scope of negation. Instead, I argue that a relational analysis of negation enables us to explain the phenomena without recourse to those syntactic operations. That is, I claim that not takes VP as a first argument and the subject as a second argument, negating the relation between the two arguments.