The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

4.8.2.1 First person object. The first person singular pronominal object prefix is kin-, which
truncates to ki- preceding continuants.
88) ki’aqqás%i
/kin-’aq-qas"i-li&/
1OBJ-HEAD-punch-PFTV
‘he punched me in the head’
89) kinc%íiní kimpás%n&i&
/kin-c"ii-nii kin-pas"ni/
1OBJ-tie-DAT 1POSS-pig
‘he tied up my pig for me’
A first person plural object is marked differently depending on whether the subject of the verb is
2 nd or 3 rd person. In either case, the marking of 1OBJ.pl comprises three separate morphemes
having an additive meaning. With a third person subject, the morphemes involved are kin- 1OBJ,
kaa- OBJ.pl, and –ni" 2OBJ. When the subject is second person, the object morphemes are kin-
1OBJ, laa- 2/1, and –w! 1pl. In both cases, a plural morpheme, the first person object prefix, and
another person marker must be present. The compositional semantics of this marking could be
seen as differentiating an exclusive from an inclusive 1 st plural object, that is, kin-laa- . . .-w!
‘you X me+him/her’ vs. kin-kaa- . . .-ni" ‘s/he/they X me+you’. This distinction is not made in
fact. Although the 1 st plural object is always interpreted as exclusive ‘us’ with a 2 nd subject, with
a 3 rd subject, the 1 st plural object, formally inclusive ‘us’, can refer to any one or more persons
and ‘me’.
The first person plural object marker kin-laa- . . .-w! is required not only when a second person
subject acts on a first person plural object, but also when a second person plural subject acts on a
first person singular object. This parallels the situation with verbs having first person subjects
and second person objects: a second person plural object marker is required whether the 2 nd
person object is singular or plural, as long as the subject is plural (see §4.8.2.2). This sort of
idiosyncratic person marking when speech act participants act on each other was noted by Heath
(1998) in many American languages and dubbed by him ‘pragmatic skewing’.
The laa- prefix is etymologically related to the reciprocal marker, and is analyzed as such by
Treschel & MacKay (2003) for Misantla Totonac, where the facts are similar. I analyze it as a
different morpheme due to its behavior in suppressing second person subject morphology, a form
of blocking not found with the reciprocal. Verbs inflected with 1OBJ.pl kin-laa- . . . –w! (by
definition having a 2 nd person subject) are ungrammatical with any form of second person
marking, either affixation or suppletive 2 nd person forms of roots or affixes (see Table 4.7 for all
2 nd person suppletive forms). Even when the kin-laa- . . .-w! marking is morphologically but not
! "''!