The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

Chapter 2 The phonology of Filomeno Mata Totonac
2.1 Introduction. This chapter presents an overview of the phonology of Filomeno Mata
Totonac, including the phoneme inventory of the language; the allomorphs and distribution of
each phoneme; phonotactics and syllable structure; general phonological constraints; the stress
system; sound symbolism; and Spanish loanwords. A large number of phonological processes
are morphologically conditioned. While it is difficult to separate the interactions of the two
components of the grammar, the phonological aspects of each are briefly covered in this chapter,
with further discussion of the morphological details provided in Chapters 4 (inflection) and 5
(derivation). First, I will describe the notation conventions used and define the word in this
language.
2.1.1 Notation conventions. Throughout this dissertation I will transcribe Totonac words with
the Americanist version of the IPA, which differs from the latter in the symbols # instead of #; $
for t#; and the apostrophe ’ rather than $. I have chosen to represent long vowels by repeating the
vowel symbol, for example, aa. Except when specifically marked within square brackets [ ] for
narrow phonetic transcriptions, or within slash marks / / for phonemic transcriptions, my
renderings will show an intermediate level of phonetic representation. This level of transcription
generally fails to note: vowel centralization; velar and uvular nasal place assimilation; optional
voicing of obstruents intervocalically; and aspiration of consonants. Note that the Πallophone
cannot take an accent mark because of computer limitations. Since it only occurs under stress, its
presence indicates the location of primary stress in the word.
Some of the examples include the source of the information cited, with the notebook number,
page number and speaker’s initials within parentheses, e.g., (9,160 jsf). The notebooks are
chronologically numbered from 1 to 10, most of them having 160 pages.
2.1.2 Word definition. FM Totonac is a big-verb language, with verbal forms often containing
five to seven morphemes, and sometimes several more. Because of the complexity of words in
the language, a definition of the concept ‘word’ is in order. I will use a simple definition: a word
is a unit of speech with only a single primary stress e.g., ka-lii-taa-qa"-c%iwíi-nan-ti& ‘talk to her
about it’ (9,40 jsf).
2.2 Phoneme Inventory. The phoneme inventory of FM Totonac is a fairly standard one for a
Totonaco-Tepehua language (see Levy’s (1987:14-17) summary of Totonaco-Tepehua phonemic
inventories). FM Totonac has 17 native consonants and three native vowel qualities, with a
length distinction bringing the number of vowels to six. The phonemes are displayed in Tables
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