Looking for hidden nominal heads in Poshkart Chuvash comparatives (and beyond)
In the Poshkart dialect of Chuvash, the past participle in - nƏ is used in relative clauses, sentential complements, phrasal standards of comparison, as well as independently. I argue that all these uses can be subsumed under a unified syntactic account that treats the suffix - nƏ as an exponent of T[ense] (or other similar head high in the extended verbal projection). Apparently nominalized participles in complement and comparative clauses can be analyzed as complements/modifiers to unpronounced nominal heads. However, an alternative analysis in terms of mixed extended projections can not be at present completely ruled out.