The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

5.6.2 Verb sequencing constructions with complement-taking verbs. When a complementtaking
verb is followed by another verb with the same subject as its complement, incomplete
sharing of inflection occurs. In these verb sequences, V2 is from an open class of verbs; V1
belongs to a limited set, of which those in Table 5.8 are examples:
Table 5.8 Complement-taking verbs
’an ‘go (to do X)’
min ‘come (to do X)’
katsii(nii) ‘know how/learn (to do X)’
laqapaastak ‘think of/remember (doing X)’
puuwan ‘think (of doing X)’
laqati ‘like (to do X)’
tsaqsa ‘try (to do X)’
tsuku ‘begin (to do X)’
In such constructions, V1 is fully inflected as normally for person agreement and TAM.
Whatever the aspect of V1, V2 is in the imperfective aspect, that is, it has final stress and carries
the IMPF suffix –aa where expected (whenever another suffix or enclitic attaches outside it,
mostly with first plural or second subjects or objects). The imperfective stem thus seems to
function here like an infinitival or participial form, in a language which otherwise makes no use
of non-finite forms. Tense and person marking on V2 have some degree of optionality.
V2 often repeats the person agreement marking of V1 for persons marked by prefixes, that is,
1SUB k- and 3SUB.pl ta-. The double marking of ta- is always present in my database, while
that of k- is in about half the examples, thus the minimal pair k-laqatí k-waayán and k-laqatí
waayán ‘I like to eat’. If both verbs are in the imperfective aspect with a 2 nd person singular
subject, 2SUB.sg laryngealization is present on the right edge of both verbs. The other person
agreement suffixes for first and second person plural are never repeated on V2. Like first person
subject, future or past tense marking is sometimes, but not always, doublemarked on V2. A large
number of examples are provided to give a sense of the variation in inflectional marking with
various person/TAM combinations in these verb sequences. In example 250 both a high vowel
and a nasal are epenthesized between words, thus the unglossed syllable in.
246) nak*án i kskín
/na-k-'an-aa k-skin-aa/
FUT-1SUB-go-IMPF 1SUB-ask.for-IMPF
‘I will go ask for it’
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