sell · 売る (uru)

Hierarchy

Same inventory as English sell. Not five-place. Not four sisters of one V. Surface count can name Pat, Chris, a lawnmower, and a price, but the lexicon does not list four co-arguments of √SELL / √URU.

$20 = nijū-doru = one MeasureP. Orthography / #P morphology is not extra arity. Sortal ichi-dai on the goods and mensural nijū-doru on the Price are two #Ps on two already-listed objects — they do not grow √URU. There is no sixth argument “currency symbol.”

What Group A Japanese changes is particle cloth and where Amount+Denomination host (#P under de). What it does not change is the inventory. Twenty is still not dollars. Dollars is still not a sister of uru. Payment-settled is still implicated, not e2. HAVE of the goods is still e2.

Japanese frames · Case clothes

No English DOC / to-frame ACC flip. Theme stays o. Recipient is ni. Price stays inside de. Double-o blocks writing Price as a second ACC. Cheapness under Neg therefore tracks the o-Theme unless Focus / WH independently highlights Price or Recipient. There is no Chris was sold a lawnmower twin that promotes Recipient into a second ACC.

1. ✓ Pat-ga Chris-ni shibakariki-o ichi-dai nijū-doru-de ut-ta. NOM · DAT · ACC · sortal #P · Price INSTR · sell-PST
2. ✓ Pat-wa Chris-ni shibakariki-o nijū-doru-de uttanakatta no ka. canonical NegQ
3. ✓ Pat-wa Chris-ni shibakariki-o nijū-doru-de utta no de wa nai ka.
4. ✓ Pat-wa shibakariki-o nijū-doru-de utta. Recipient omitted; de-PP may reread as Theme₂ of exchange — still one MeasureP
5. ✓ Pat-wa shibakariki-o utta. Recipient and Price independently omissible
6. * Pat-ga Chris-ni shibakariki-o nijū-doru-o uttanakatta. Double-o: Price ≠ second ACC
7. * Pat-ga Chris-o shibakariki-o nijū-doru-de utta. Recipient ≠ ACC (and Double-o)

A bare negative answer on the canonical NegQ most readily challenges the event or the goods. Challenging the twenty wants the Price QP already under discussion. That is the opposite of harau, where the money is o and is cheap.

MeasureP WH diagnostics

WH forces Amount ≠ Denomination inside one Case object of de. Verbal WH sees the MeasureP, not unit and degree as two objects of uru. Watanabe’s #P: Amount in Spec, Denomination as #°, Case as the particle. Same MeasureP pattern as English sell and as deduct. Float moves Num+CL, not the counter off the numeral. Double-o survives nai.

1. ✓ Nan-doru-de uttanakatta no ka. Amount WH + # head under de
2. ✓ Ikura-de uttanakatta no ka. Price degree; unit bound
3. ✓ Dono-tsūka-de / nan-no tsūka-de uttanakatta no ka. in-strategy rescue
4. ✓ Nani-o uttanakatta no ka. nani = goods
5. * Nani nijū-de uttanakatta no ka. Japanese of *for what twenty
6. * Nan-o nijū-doru-de uttanakatta. nani as if unit of Price; goods missing
7. * Doru-de nijū uttanakatta no ka. CL stranded from numeral

Two constraints conspire on the stars: Left Branch / #P integrity (Amount in Spec,#P; Japanese cannot treat bare nijū as the sortal of nani under de), and Double-o (Price cannot become a second ACC object of uru). Rescues are nan-doru-de, ikura-de, and dono-tsūka-de — the Group A spelling of English how many dollars / in what currency. The rescue does not make doru a sister of utta.

Geometry · uru ≠ torikaeru ≠ harau

In Pat-wa Chris-ni shibakariki-o utta, Chris comes to HAVE the lawnmower. That is give-geometry. ni-Recipient is the spell-out of low Appl_HAVE — the HAVE diagnostic that SWAP lacks.

• ≠ torikaeru / swap. Chris is Recipient HAVE-goods, not Theme₂. torikaeru inverts two Themes; uru does not invert goods and money. *8400 USDT-o 0.2 BTC-de uttanakatta is only good if the goods really are the USDT.
• ≠ harau / pay_GIVE. Cloth mismatch under one operator: nijū-doru-o harawanakatta no ka questions ACC money; nijū-doru-de uttanakatta no ka questions a Price INSTR. Shared doru is packaging. The particle gives the heads away: o tracks the mower on uru; o tracks the money on harau.
• Payment-true is implicated, not entailed — the missing default of uru. Goods-HAVE is e2 of uru and the missing default of harau.

When Recipient is dropped (Pat-wa shibakariki-o nijū-doru-de utta), the de-PP can be reread as incoming Incremental Theme of an exchange. That rereading changes the Appl head (HAVE vs SWAP); it does not split twenty from dollars or add a verbal sister for the unit.

Shells, ApplP, and Case

VoiceP  [ Pat
  vP / initP
    ApplP_LOW  [ Chrisni   [ Appl_HAVE
      VP  [ √URU   [ Theme  shibakarikio ] ] ] ]
    PP_de  [ de  [ MeasureP / #P  [ Amount nijū ] [ #° doru ] ] ] ]

Japanese uru never assigns four structural Cases. Theme is o; Recipient is ni; Price is inside P (de). Double-o is the morphological version of the English ceiling *sold $20 a lawnmower: two accusatives from one domain are blocked. A language that appears to have “sold him the mower twenty dollars” has either a second domain (CAUSE / -sase- or high Appl) or a MeasureP that is not a second object.

Amount is not an Incremental Theme of sell on the give-reading. The lawnmower is. Twenty dollars can measure the sale as a scale without being the object that is incrementally transferred. On a SWAP rereading, the MeasureP becomes the incoming Incremental Theme — still one Theme, still internally Amount + Unit.

Type A -sase- over inner uru allows two ni (Causee ≠ Recipient) and still forbids two o. Price stays de and never becomes a third o. Particles label Causee and Recipient, so two ni do not collide the way two Romance à collide. Double-o under CAUSE is domain collapse, not evidence that Type A is bad.

Omission does not demote Price to a pure adjunct. High and selected P-layers are optional in the numeration; they are still arguments when present. The diagnostic is participanthood under Case, binding, and WH — not omitability.

Underivables (Japanese)

1. * Pat-ga Chris-ni shibakariki-o nijū-doru-o uttanakatta. Double-o; Price ≠ ACC
2. * Nani nijū-de uttanakatta no ka. *for what twenty
3. * Nan-o nijū-doru-de uttanakatta. nani ≠ unit of Price with goods missing
4. * Doru-de nijū uttanakatta no ka. CL stranded from numeral
5. * 8400 USDT-o 0.2 BTC-de uttanakatta. no SWAP inversion (unless goods really are USDT)
6. * Buchō-wa Pat-o shibakariki-o Chris-ni ur-ase-nakatta. Double-o under CAUSE
7. * Nijū-doru-o uttanakatta no ka. as Price of uru — pay cloth / Double-o

Group A packaging · Mandarin live · Navajo deferred

Group A (English, Japanese, Mandarin, Navajo) is the measuring-locus contrast set already used for MeasureP pied-piping and NegQ on sell. Same hierarchy; different host of Amount+Denomination and cloth of Recipient. Mandarin 卖 is now at sell · Mandarin (mài) (把 fronts the goods QP; Price as 以 / 用 / 多少钱). Navajo HANDLE class shares the Group A DOCX; full sense×language page remains a later queue tick. Group B Romance remains on the Spanish page.

Open items

• Navajo micro-entry. Same Group A geometry; HANDLE packaging. Mandarin twin live at sell-zh.html. NV deferred — do not invent depth.
• Dual-denomination prices (8400 USDT-de with goods 0.2 BTC). Still one MeasureP with a pair-name unit (LP-token moral), not two Themes / a sixth slot. Same open as English.
• Scaler vs #° (grand / man vs doru). Chase Group A: go-man-nani-no-tsūka-o seats U inside one o-phrase when Theme is the money QP; *go-man-gurando-o nani-o is still Double-o. Needs controlled elicitation against sell’s de-Price, not only against Theme ACC.
• Sell versus seikyū / charge_FEE. FROM rather than HAVE-TO needs its own grid; do not reuse this frame. Weather still cannot sell.
• Float landing-site debate. Miyagawa vs adverbial analyses agree on the # complex; NegQ does not adjudicate the debate. Speculative beyond the extract’s agreement.

Corpus filenames

Primary extract for this micro-entry is Group A NegQ on sell (Japanese section). Geometry is shared with the English lexical entry. Chase Group A supplies scaler / #° under Double-o. Chat packaging summary: Tritransitive NegQ Turn Group A. Text extracts used this tick under /tmp/sell-ja-extracts/.