Afterthoughts in Greek: Gender mismatches under a dynamic framework

Abstract

This paper deals with the syntax of afterthoughts in Greek under a parsing-oriented perspective. The main claim is that afterthoughts can receive a straightforward explanation once we make the assumption that afterthoughts can be seen as answers to implicit questions. A formal syntactic account based on this assumption is put forth, and its ability to deal with gender mismatches exhibited in Greek afterthoughts is shown. Afterthoughts are further discussed in a more general perspective, arguing that once we turn into a dynamic model where context re-use and update are taken to be core components of syntax, a number of issues regarding afterthoughts like connectivity effects, locality constraints, freedom of positioning and reconstruction effects can receive a straightforward explanation.