The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

would attach before the enclitics (but see the following subsection for a discussion of the
inconsistent facts regarding affixes vs. clitics in FM Totonac); certainly there is no evidence
against this.
6.5.3.2 Affixes vs. clitics. Morphemes occur on both the outer edges of the FM Totonac verb for
which the evidence of ‘affixhood’ or ‘clitichood’ is mixed. These include the mood/tense
markers just discussed, as well as the deictics and other outer postverbal morphemes. These facts
complicate the analysis of verb structure.
There are four types of evidence in this language for the strength of attachment of a morpheme to
a verb: stress, nasal epenthesis (see §2.6.5.2), position in the verb, and ability to attach to other
word classes. Generally affixes may be stressed, clitics may not; nasal epenthesis occurs between
independent words and between clitic and stem, but not between affix and stem; clitics attach
outside affixes; and clitics but not affixes may attach to words of multiple classes. These
phenomena will be used to test the questionable outer morphemes in the following subsections.
6.5.3.2.1 Pre-verbal outer morphemes. The morphemes outside the stress zone on the left of
the verb root include the mood/tense markers, a set of adverbials, negation, and various negative
polarity elements. Besides their unstressability, the mood/tense markers IRR ka- and future na-
show no evidence of clitichood: they do not attach to other word classes, and are not separated
from the stem by nasal epenthesis by the great majority of speakers 10 . Except for their inability to
be stressed, then, the mood and tense markers pattern with the other prefixes. Their
unstressability may indicate a weaker attachment to the verb than that of the more inner prefixes,
but is also indicative of the lack of a categorical distinction between clitics and affixes in this
language.
Adverbials in P15 may occur as independent words or attached to the stem, as diagnosed by lack
of primary stress. Those of a single syllable and those without preceding negative or negative
polarity morphemes are more likely to attach to the verb or other parts of speech; those with
more phonological weight tend to remain as separate words. In either case, nasal epenthesis is
the rule. Thus the adverbials seem to behave as clitics or words, but certainly not as affixes.
41) tsaa"tatáma
/tsaa-#tata-maa/
OPT-sleep-PROG
‘having other options, he’s sleeping’ (6,46 jsf)
10 It is interesting that my youngest consultant did consistently insert a nasal between the future
na- and a stem, so that for example, na- + tasa, natasá ‘s/he will cry’ in standard speech
becomes nantasá in her speech. She is the only person to do this among at least two dozen
individuals I tested.
! #'"!