The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

Chapter 6 The structure of the FM Totonac verb
6.1 Introduction. Chapters 4 and 5 describe each of the approximately 100 verbal morphemes of
Filomeno Mata Totonac, their functions and semantics. This chapter will analyze the structure of
the complex verb, which can be simultaneously affixed with many of these morphemes. While
the FM Totonac verb clearly has characteristics of a position-class morphology, such as fixed
affix ordering and non-semantically motivated blocking, some evidence also exists for an
(apparently nascent) hierarchical structure 6 . This evidence, much of it theoretically and
typologically significant, includes morphophonological and morphological processes that divide
the verb into zones. The basis for the major division of the verb into three zones of each side of
the root is typologically unusual: the permissible ordering of the affixes, which may be fixed,
variable or scopal. Other processes, such as blocking and nasal epenthesis, give evidence for subzones,
many of whose boundaries do not coincide exactly with those of the major zones. Thus
the various types of evidence do not converge to mark out well-defined subconstituents or stems,
and the zones often interpenetrate one another. (This may be typical of a language in a particular
stage of diachronic development, one in which the relationships among morphemes are moving
from being syntactic to being morphological.) In any case, the layering undeniably shows signs
of a hierarchical structure unexpected in a pure position class or templatic morphology.
This chapter will continue with an overview of some of the more interesting phenomena related
to verbal structure: variable affix ordering, blocking and the interpenetration of zones. The
following sections will then motivate the structure of the verb from the inside out, working
through each of the three major zones on each side of the root.
6.2 Overview of variable affix ordering. As in many languages with multiple affixation, some
affixes must occur in a fixed order, while the order of affixation of others depends on semantic
scope (affix order based on scope will be discussed in §6.5.1.1). This is true of FM Totonac, but
the language also allows the variable ordering of certain affixes that is unrelated to scopal issues.
The possibility of affix permutations occurs in a zone on either side of the verb root, as shown in
Table 6.1.
6 Other languages with combined templatic/hierarchical structure are described in Caballero
2008; Melnar 2004; Inkelas 1993; Muysken 1986 and Muysken 1981.
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