The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

With many intransitives, in summary, the instrumental applicatives transitivize the verb by
adding an instrument, means or cause object argument to the core; when this object has an
animate referent, it is marked on the verb with an object affix or the dative. Other intransitives
and possibly all transitives fail to gain valence through derivation with the instrumental. In these
cases lii- and puu- seem to merely license an oblique argument without bringing it into the core.
In these latter cases, the instrumental cannot be said to act as an applicative.
5.4.2.4 Locatives kaa-, puu-. The two locative prefixes, kaa- and puu-, only rarely serve as
applicatives. The semantics of the two locatives is different, with kaa- meaning ‘in or at a place’,
‘on a surface’, and puu- glossed as ‘inside or within a place’, ‘inside (something)’. The
semantics of –puu are closely related to the related instrumental prefix described in §5.4.2.3;
they differ in their position in the verb (see Appendix B). Both may originate in the body part
prefix meaning ‘inside part’; such a derivation is one of the traits common in the Meso-American
linguistic area defined by Campbell, Kaufman and Smith-Stark (1986). Either locative can be
affixed to a verb of any class, with the location they license generally remaining an oblique
argument. Given the nature of the locative, the argument they mark is inanimate in the
overwhelming majority of the cases. Some examples of the locatives’ non-applicative use with
positionals, statives and intransitives are:
130) puuxúu
/puu-xuu-aa/
LOC-inside-IMPF
‘it’s inside (its case)’
131) púuyaa s%ánati&
/puu-yaa-li& s"ánati& /
LOC-standing-PFTV flower
‘the flower stood in (a vase)’
132) puumaakú*u&
/puu-maa-aa-ku’u&/
LOC-lying-STILL-IMPF
‘(the cornfield) is still sown’
133) puuwáka
/puu-waka-aa/
LOC-up-IMPF
‘it’s hanging up inside (a treetop)
! "*-!