The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

4.4 Inflectional categories. As shown in Table 4.1, the inflectional categories realized on the
FM Totonac verb are person agreement, both subject and object; and tense, aspect and mood.
Subject and (on transitive verbs) object markers are obligatory, and express singular or plural
number, and first, second or third person, with an inclusive-exclusive distinction in 1 st plural.
Third person singular is always zero-marked. TAM inflection is also obligatory on verbs in FM
Totonac; there are no non-finite forms. The tenses are past, present and future, with present tense
having the unmarked value. Four aspects are distinguished: imperfective, perfective, perfect and
progressive. The moods are realis (zero-marked) and irrealis, both obligatorily marked, and the
counterexpectational, required in certain TAM combinations. These facts are summarized in
Table 4.2.
Table 4.2 Inflectional categories
Person
Subject 1 sg/pl inc/pl exc 2 sg/pl
Object 1 sg/pl inc/pl exc 2 sg/pl
3 sg/pl
Tense Past Present Future
Aspect Imperfective Perfective Perfect Progressive
Mood Realis Irrealis Countere
xpectatio
nal
! ""#!
3 sg/pl
4.5 Inflectional processes. All morphological processes associated with inflection involve the
addition of segmentally overt affixes, with one exception: second person subject, in addition to
agreement suffixes, is marked by i) suppletion of certain roots and derivational suffixes; and, for
second person singular only, by ii) a floating constricted glottis [cg] feature, realized as
laryngealization of the final consonant of the verb stem in the imperfective and perfect aspects.
A summary of all inflectional affixes appears in Table 4.3.