Trace (linguistics)

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In generative linguistics, a trace is a notional "ghost" of a syntactic entity that can be regarded as being in an utterance for the purposes of syntactic analysis. It is the result of the movement of a linguistic expression from its initial position in the course of a transformation.

[edit] Example

The statement "I want John to go" is transformed into an 'echo'-question. If "who" is moved to the beginning of the sentence, it will leave a trace. The existence of the trace will make it impossible to contract "want" and "to".

I want John to go. ==> You want whom to go?
                      ^          v
                      |__________|
                       ==> Whom do you want to go?