A Sketch of a Lowering Analysis of Optional Movements in a Single Cycle Model

In this paper, I propose a unifying analysis of Japanese scrambling and English heavy NP shift which incorporates Boskovic and Takahashi's (1998) insights. Unlike their analysis, however, my analysis is embedded in the single cycle model of grammar developed by Chomsky (2000, 2001a, 2001b) and Nissenbaum (2000). The basic idea is that a scrambled/HNPSed phrase is merged to its surface position and lowers to its θ-position for θ-feature checking. I argue that the optionality of those operations is reduced to the absence of restrictions on the selection of lexical subarrays. I also argue that the difference in locality between the two operations is derived from the difference between Japanese and English in the inventory of functional categories, in combination with a hypothesis on the timing of Spell-Out