The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

The verbal derivational affixes involved in nominalizations include locatives kaa- and puu-;
instrumentals lii- and puu-; inceptive ta-; and habitualizer –nan. The nominalizing suffixes used
in deverbal constructions are –ti" with antepenult stress; -ni" with antepenult stress; and –ni" with
penult stress. There are also two zero-morph constructions, one associated with penult and one
with antepenult stress. (In FM Totonac, the stress pattern of any multimorphemic word is
determined by the final suffix—see §2.7.2.)
A small number of nouns are derived by one of the above processes plus glottalization of the
final consonant. These are covered in the last subsection.
3.3.11.1 Subject nominalizations in habitualizer –nan. Two types of subject nominalizations
are found in FM Totonac, one forming agentive nouns from transitive verbs and another yielding
‘experiencer’ nouns from intransitives.
3.3.11.1.1 Agentive nominalizations. Deverbal agentive nouns are derived from a transitive
verb root suffixed by the habitualizer/ detransitivizing morpheme –nVn. The suffix is usually –
nan, but certain verbs are lexically specified to take a vowel harmonic allomorph of the
habitualizer. Rather than adding a nominalizer to the derived stem, the agentive construction is
associated with a phonological rule that changes –nVn to –nV’V, with stress on the first vowel.
This appears to be a stress shift leftward, which always results in the deletion of a final –n
(§2.6.4.4.3.5). The subject nominalization process is very regular and productive. All agentive
nouns may be pluralized (§3.3.1.3).
Table 3.12 Agentive nominalizations
tlaqná’a& < tlaq ‘play’ ‘musician’
tsapaná’a& < tsapa ‘sew’ ‘seamstress’
staaná’a& < staa ‘sell’ ‘seller’
tsoqnú’u& < tsoq ‘write’ ‘writer’
’aqsiitní’i&