Trace

A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics

// n. 1. (t) In the REST and in GB, a putative empty category left behind in a particular location by the movement of some element out of that position. The use of traces allows a tree to ‘remember’ earlier stages of a derivation, and traces can be regarded as a formalization of certain aspects of the earlier derivational constraints.

GB recognizes two types of traces: NP-traces and WH-traces; see examples under those entries. Chomsky (1975b). 2. In natural-language processing, a record of the steps involved in the construction by a parser of a parse for a particular input.