Trace

Trace may refer to:

Mathematics

Computer science and electronics

Trace (album)

Trace is the first album by Son Volt, released in 1995. The band was formed the previous year by Jay Farrar after the breakup of the influential alt-country band Uncle Tupelo. The album reached #166 on the Billboard 200 album chart and received extremely favorable reviews. According to Allmusic, "Throughout Son Volt's debut, Trace, the group reworks classic honky tonk and rock & roll, adding a desperate, determined edge to their performances. Even when they rock out, there is a palpable sense of melancholy to Farrar's voice, which lends a poignancy to the music." The album was in the top 10 of Rolling Stone's 1995 critics' list.

"Drown" was a minor college and rock radio hit. It charted at #10 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and #25 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. It remains their only single to chart on either of the charts.

Track listing

All of the songs were written by Farrar except "Mystifies Me", written by Ronnie Wood.

Trace (linguistics)

In transformational grammar, a trace is an empty (phonologically null) category that occupies a position in the syntactic structure. In some theories of syntax, traces are used in the account of constructions such as wh-movement and passive. Traces are important theoretical devices in some approaches to syntax.

Concept

A trace is usually what occupies the empty (null) position in the syntactic structure that is left behind when some element undergoes movement. For example, in a case involving wh-movement, a structure like

is transformed into

the wh-word what being moved to the front of the sentence. In theories that posit traces, the position from which the wh-word was moved (in this case, the position of the direct object of eating), is considered to be occupied by a trace. In relevant linguistic texts, the trace may be denoted by a letter t; so the second sentence above may be written:

Traces are considered primarily in Chomskyan transformational grammar and its various developments. They are distinguished from other empty syntactic categories, commonly denoted PRO and pro. More details and examples can be found in the article on empty categories.