The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

5.3.1.2 Desiderative mood. The suffix –kutun very regularly and transparently adds a
desiderative meaning to a verb.
17) s%pas%iikutunkán
/s"-pas"-ii-kutun-kan/
PAST-bathe-TRAN-DES-REF-IMPF
‘they wanted to bathe him’
18) ktsulukutún
/k-tsulu-kutun/
1SUB-urinate-DES-IMPF
‘I want to urinate’
5.3.2 Secondary aspectual morphemes. FM Totonaco has many verbal affixes or clitics with an
aspectual meaning in addition to the four primary aspect suffixes discussed in §4.7.2. One of
these, a*= (NOT) YET, was treated in §5.2.2 with the other negative polarity items. The others,
to be discussed below are: adverbial ‘ak- ‘at the point of’; the associated motion kii- ROUND-
TRIP and tii- PASS-BY; ta- MIDDLE VOICE, which functions as an inceptive with positional
verbs; ambulative –tii"a; iterative –para; totalitive/ terminative –qo’o; BEFORE –qe’e; deictic
HERE/MOMENTARY –$i; and enclitic adverbials JUST –ku’u" and YA –ts%!.
Other non-aspectual adverbials are also found in prefix position 15. These are discussed in
§5.5.5.
5.3.2.1 Aspectual adverbial ’ak=. Adverbs generally occur immediately preceding the verb they
modify. Several which are monosyllabic cliticize to the verb stem. Among the various aspectual
adverbials that may appear in preverbal position 15 is ‘ak= ‘at the point of’. It is probable that
this morpheme derives from the body part prefix ‘ak- HEAD.
19) ’ak"tatatáwi
/’ak=#tata-ta-wi/
POINT-sleep-MID-seated-IMPF
‘he’s at the point of falling asleep seated’
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