The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

5.4.4 Valence-decreasing constructions. In addition to the many valence-increasing operations,
FM Totonac has four valence-decreasing constructions: a non-prototypical antipassive, an
inceptive/middle voice marker, a reciprocal and a reflexive. In addition, an impersonal passivelike
construction formed with the reflexive morpheme exists and will be discussed in this
section. Most of these constructions may be applied to any transitive verb, except for the middle
voice construction, which is limited to resultative verbs.
5.4.4.1 Anti-passive –nan. Dixon & Aikhenvald give the following criteria for a prototypical
antipassive:
a) applies to an underlying transitive clause and forms a derived intransitive;
b) the underlying A becomes S of the antipassive;
c) the underlying O argument goes into a peripheral function, being marked by a non-core
case, adposition, etc; this argument can be omitted, although there is always the option of
including it;
d) there is some explicit formal marking of a passive construction [generally, by a verbal
affix or periphrastic verbal construction].
Dixon & Aikhenvald (1997:73-4)
FM Totonac’s antipassive-like derivation uses the habitual or indefinite object suffix –nan (or –
nVn, sometimes subject to root vowel harmony; see §2.6.4.2) and meets criteria a), b), and d),
but always omits the underlying O. Dixon & Aikhenvald predict this type of construction, calling
it a “patientless antipassive” (D&A 1997:74), although they state that no examples are known at
the time of their writing.
Examples of intransitive verbs derived from inherently transitive ones with –nan are given
below; each of these includes the semantics of ‘habitually’ or ‘for a living’:
172) staanán 173) ktlaqnán
/staa-nan-aa/ /k-tlaq-nan-aa/
sell-HAB-IMPF 1exc-play-HAB-IMPF
‘she sells’ ‘I play (music)’
174) taqa"aanán 175) c%anán
/ta-qa#aa-nan-aa/ /c"an-nan-aa/
3SUB.pl-steal-HAB-IMPF sow-HAB-IMPF
‘they steal’ ‘he sows’
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