The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

4.8.1.2 Second person subject. Second person subject inflection in FM Totonac is somewhat
complex, being marked by affixes, realizational morphology and suppletion of certain roots and
inflectional and derivational morphemes.
The second person singular marker has two allomorphs, the suffix –ti" and a floating constricted
glottis feature that attaches to the final consonant of the verb stem. The -ti" allomorph is
associated with stress two syllables preceding itself, the [cg] allomorph with stress one syllable
before itself. (Primary stress on all multimorphemic words in FM Totonac is determined by the
final suffixal construction; for a discussion, see §2.7.2.) The choice of allomorph is made by the
phonology: -ti" cannot appear immediately following an unstressed vowel; in such contexts, [cg]
is the required marker. Since the syllable preceding the 2SUB.sg morpheme must be unstressed
due to the associated antepenult stress pattern, this means that the –ti" allomorph is found only
with stems ending in a closed syllable. The one exception occurs with verbs in the progressive
aspect; the –ti" allomorph is selected immediately following the second person progressive suffix
–paa, as in example 70. Given the phonological forms of the four major aspect markers, the
result is that the 2 nd person subject in the perfective and progressive is marked by –ti", and in the
imperfective and perfect by the constricted glottis feature.
In other Totonac varieties –ti" and –li", both with an associated antepenult stress pattern, mark the
perfective aspect in verbs with 2 nd and 1 st /3 rd subjects respectively.
67) naqa"íy’a&
/na-qa#i-aa-[cg]/
FUT-have-IMPF-2SUB.sg
“you will have it’
68) tapaaníit’a&
/ta-paa-niita-[cg]/
MID-lying2-PFT-2SUB.sg
‘you have lain down’
69) tanc%íc%inti&
/tan-c"ic"in-ti&/
REAR-heat- 2SUB.sg
‘you burned your tail’
70) taaskúxpaati&
/taa-skux-paa-ti&/
COM-work-PROG2-2SUB.sg
‘you are working’
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