Editing Distributed morphology (section)

===Lowering===

Lowering is sensitive to syntactic headedness and operates on abstract feature bundles, after syntactic movement but prior to vocabulary insertion.<ref name=Embick/>  Lowering takes place when a head X lowers to the head of its complement, Y.  For example, T in English (e.g. +past) lowers to be realized on the head of its complement V, as in "John [<sub>TP</sub> t<sub>T</sub> [<sub>vP</sub> play-ed piano]]."  An adjoined adverb will not block this syntactic movement, since it is sensitive to syntactic headedness rather than linear adjacency: "John skillfully play-ed piano."  On the other hand, a Merged Negation head will block this movement and trigger 'do insertion':" John did not play piano" (Embick & Noyer 2001:564).<ref name=Embick/>