The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

Chapter 5 Derivational Verbal Morphology
5.1 Introduction. The verbal derivational morphology of FM Totona is exceptionally rich. This
chapter will describe the many verbal morphemes whose categories are not obligatorily marked
on the verb, including a wealth of valence-changing affixes; negation and negative polarity
items; distributive, desiderative, iterative, ambulative, totalitive and deictic affixes; and other
more idiosyncratic ones, such as DOWN, ROUND-TRIP and MEANWHILE. All affixes and
clitics discussed in this chapter are listed in Appendix A.
As noted in Chapter 4, the division of the morphology into inflectional and derivational is made
problematic by complications like the occurrence of inflectional affixes inside derivational ones,
and affixes that express both derivational and inflectional categories. One affix,
counterexpectational ti-, must be considered in both chapters 4 and 5, since it is obligatory for
the expression of deontic necessity and conditionality, but is also available to freely derive verbs
with the meaning ‘do X against expectations’. As with the treatment of the inflectional
morphology, this chapter will limit itself to the functional and semantic aspects of derivation,
with a discussion of verbal structure to come in Chapter 6.
The use of the extensive morphological resources of the language to create new lexical items is
apparent on a daily basis. Perhaps because Totonac has not been a written language until very
recently, speakers often differ in how they construct words, for example, using different
nominalization strategies, as in takátsi" and takatsíin, both meaning ‘knowledge’, or líitsoqn"i" and
liimaqátsoqn"i", ‘writing instrument’, with the second form including the body part prefix maqa-
‘hand’. Speakers in Filomeno Mata frequently say that they don’t use a certain word used by
others, but that it’s understandable, and often comment with pleasure on particularly apropos
derived forms that have not been previously lexicalized. For example, there seems to be no
widely accepted word in the FM Totonac for ‘eyebrow’, but my consultant’s brother was
celebrated by his family for his creation of muutanqa$i#iti", from ‘forehead’ and ‘hair’. It seems
that people are creating words on the fly with the rich derivational resources at their command,
some of which become conventionalized and others not, to a greater extent than is found in nonagglutinating
languages.
Most derivational affixes may occur only once on a verb, but a small number may attach
recursively if morphosemantically motivated. These include dative –nii, causative maa-, and the
instrumental applicatives lii- and puu-. In the case of the two instrumentals, it is possible for both
to be affixed to a single verb. Each case of recursive affixation is discussed in the appropriate
section of this chapter.
The rest of this chapter is divided into four categories: 1) negation and negative polarity items;
2) secondary mood and aspect, 3) valence-changing morphology; and 4) other affixes, including
deictics. Derivation is achieved entirely through affixation, and like inflectional affixes,
derivational affixes occur both preceding and following the verb stem. Appendix B gives the
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