The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

The adverbials in the final post-verbal position are very clitic-like, frequently found attached to
all word classes, and frequently preceded by epenthetic nasals. Unlike canonical clitics, -ku’u"
STILL takes primary word stress whenever it occurs.
The facts of nasal epenthesis are also inconsistent on this extreme of the verb: as noted, nasals
are generally epenthesized preceding the adverbial clitics of post-verbal position 15, and also
preceding the deictics of position 13, but are never found before any of the person/aspect
markers of S14. This seems to indicate that the deictics are less tightly attached to the stem than
a set of morphemes that appear farther from the root than they. This situation may have
diachronic roots: it seems possible that the deictics developed from independent verbs occurring
in a verb sequence construction (see §5.5.4) and were mis-analyzed as attaching after position
12, which could seem to be the end of the verb, since most verbs do not have an affix on the
surface in position 14. The suffixes of position 14 offer their own idiosyncracy; they assign
stress, but because of the interplay of the stress rules, can never be stressed themselves.
Therefore there is conflicting evidence of strength of attachment to the verb of all of the
morphemes of the last three post-verbal positions.
6.5.3.3 Degemination at the stress zone boundaries. One other phonological process occurs
only in Zone 3. FM Totonac generally preserves false geminates brought together at morpheme
boundaries. However, at the edges of the stress zone, where the nasal epenthesis and stress facts
are inconsistent, certain morphemes undergo degemination processes. The morphemes involved
are four inflectional affixes: first person exclusive k- in prefix position 13, past tense #- in P14,
2 nd person singular and plural subject markers –ti" and –titi" in suffix position 14; and enclitic –ts’!
in S15 (see §2.6.2.2 for degemination details). With the exception of 1SUB k-, these morphemes
are among those noted in §6.5.3.2 as appearing less tightly bound to the verb stem. It is not clear
why degemination should occur precisely where morpheme attachment to the verb stem is
weaker.
6.5.3.4 Other evidence of structure. Evidence regarding the order of attachment of the final
preverbal vs. post-verbal morphemes of Zone 3 is weak. The negative intensifiers of P16 interact
with major aspect in an interesting way. In the progressive and perfective aspects, they are
required for simple negation, e.g., "aa=tuu=kú$i (*"aa=kú$i) ‘it didn’t cure him’ (perfective),
while in the imperfective and perfect aspects they reveal their intensifier function: "aa=tuu=#kuchíi
‘nothing cured him’ (imperfective). This confirms the stress evidence that the morphemes
through S14 attach prior to the negative polarity proclitics.
Summary of Zone 3. Zone 3 includes the outermost morphemes, affixes and clitics, occurring in
fixed order. It would have been convenient for diagnosing verb structure if the affixes and clitics
of this zone had been clearly disntinguishable. However, several morphemes at both edges of the
stress zone—those in preverbal position 13 and postverbal positions 13-15—exhibit inconsistent
evidence of their status as affixes or clitics. FM Totonac verbal affixes generally are stressable,
occur only on verbs, and cannot be separated from a stem by nasal epenthesis, while clitics show
the opposite patterns. The conflicting evidence related to the morphemes in question raises
! #''!