The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

(HEAD-do-DOWN) ‘s/he exploits him/her’ or ’aqsqawimíi (HEAD-twist-DOWN) ‘s/he
manipulates him/her’. Outside the semantic domains just described, DOWN is found only in a
few lexicalized forms.
212) laksíitmi n kápsnati&
/lak-siit-mii-li& kápsnati&/
DIST-cut-DOWN-PFTV paper
‘she cut the paper up in little pieces (with scissors)’
213) ’ak"kanuumíi
/ak-#ka-nuu-mii/
HEAD-measure-DOWN
‘he passed him (in weeding his strip of land)’
214) kapuutlaqápiiti& n c%aawilá’A
/ka-puu-tlaqa-pii-ti& c"aawilá’A/
IRR-LOC-chase.off-DOWN2-PFTV2 turkey
‘chase out the turkey!’
215) kaa’aktlawapíipaati&
/kaa-ak-tlawa-pii–paa-ti&/
OBJ.pl-HEAD-do-DOWN2-PROG2-PFTV2
‘you are mistreating them’
5.5.4 Deictics. FM Totonac has proximal and distal deictics, $i HERE and $a THERE, that occur
in an interesting distribution. As prefixes they are found only with the verb ’an ‘go’, as in $i-an!
$in ‘arrive here’ and $a’an ‘arrive there’, and in many other forms derived from these two. The
deictics always occur immediately preceding the verb root. Because of this limited distribution, I
have considered $a’an and $in to be frozen forms, and have not given the prefixes $i- and $a- a
place in the verb template.
However, they also occur in a slightly different form in suffix position 13, preceding the final
subject/object/aspect inflectional markers. In this position HERE takes the forms –$i with first
and third person subjects, and –$it! with second person subjects, and THERE appears as –$a’!
with 1 st and 3 rd subjects and as –pi" with 2 nd subjects. The suffix –$i is identical with the
corresponding proximal prefix; of the other three deictic forms, -$it! and –$a’! are formally
identical to the verbs in the perfective aspect $it! ‘arrived here’ ($i-tan, with perfective final –n
deletion) and $a’! ‘arrived there’ ($a-‘an, also with final –n deletion). The form –pi"
! "-"!