Trace

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A trace marks the location in a sentence or syntactic tree from which a lexical item has been moved.

Examples

From the original structure, wh-movement creates a trace where John used to be.

John will eat apples.
[Johni [will eat apples]]
Who will eat apples?
[Whoi [ti will eat apples]]
	        CP
	       /|
	   Whoi |
	       IP
               /|
	     NP	I'
 	     |	|\
	     |	I VP
	     ti	|  |
		|  V'
	      will |\
		   V \
		   |  NP
                   eat |
		       |

apples

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