Trace
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
| STUB |