The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

5.4.4.2.4 Verbs in inceptive/causative alternation. The final group of FM Totonac verbs that
can be derived by ta- are bound roots that may be inflected only after they are prefixed by either
ta- or CAUSATIVE maa- (. . –ii), i.e., those that exist only in the inchoative/caustive alternation
in the sense of Levin and Rappaport (1995) or Haspelmath (1993). The intransitive/transitive
pairs thus derived have meanings such as ta-’akta ‘s/he descends’, maa-’ak-tii ‘s/he lowers it’;
ta-c'oqo ‘s/he stops’, maa-$oq-ee ‘s/he stops it’; ta-moqos ‘s/he falls’, maa-moqos-ii ‘s/he drops
it’; ta-kaks ‘s/he calms down’, maa-kaks-aa ‘s/he calms him/her down’; ta-pitsi ‘it cracks’, maapits-ii
‘s/he divides it’. Some of the forms in ta- are intransitive verbs of activity (e.g.,
‘descend’), while others are verbs of accomplishment (e.g., ‘calm down’) or of achievement
(e.g., ‘split’). A list of all the bound roots in this category from my database is given in Table
5.4.
Table 5.4 Inceptive-Causative alternations
Inceptivized
verb
Gloss Causativized
verb
! ",)!
Gloss
ta-’akta s/he descends maa-'akt-ii s/he lowers it
t-’aqa"u s/he descends maa-’aqa"uu s/he lowers it
ta-c%awa it opens maa-c%aw-ii s/he opens it
ta-c%oqo s/he stops maa-c%oq-ee s/he stops it
ta-c%utoq" its outer layer pulls
off
maa-c%utoq" s/he pulls off its outer
layer
ta-kaks s/he calms down maa-kaks-aa s/he calms him/her
down
ta-laki it opens maa-laki s/he opens it
ta-moqos s/he falls maa-moqos-ii s/he drops it
ta-peqs it gets peeled maa-peqs s/he peels it
ta-pink it splits maa-pink s/he splits it
ta-pitsi it splits maa-pitsi s/he divides it
ta-puuli s/he enters the small
ta-(tan)-
qalax
streets in a town
maa-puuli s/he introduces
something into the
small streets in a town
it turns over maa-(tan)-qalax s/he turns it over
ta-qe’e& it gets uncovered maa-qe’e& s/ he uncovers it