The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

only five languages outside the Totonaco-Tepehua family (Yasugi 1995:60). Only 21% of the
languages in Yasugi’s sample limited stops to voiceless only. Totonaco is the only Meso-
American family to have a three-vowel system, although in the larger area covered by his survey
Yasugi noted two other families, Yuman and Chibchan, with a similarly limited vowel system.
2.2.3 Final consonants, glottal features, and devoiced vowels. Before any discussion of
phonemes can take place, an interesting set of phenomena in FM Totonac must be noted. Across
the Totonaco-Tepehua family, the various varieties show differences in the retention of final
unstressed vowels. Some of the languages tend to retain final vowels, others have lost many of
them. Filomeno Mata shows an intermediate tendency, with many words ending in voiceless
vowels or in consonants that contain voiceless vowel features in their release. This is heard in
citation forms and when the preceding consonants are by regular rule prosodically aspirated or
glottalized pre-pausally. These vowel features in the consonant release become fully vocalized in
connected speech, e.g. lakastáp&u" ‘eyes!, but lakastapu #kayíw’! ‘green eyes’. This describes the
majority of reflexes of words ending in final unstressed vowels. However, a relatively small
number of words, such as kúyu ‘armadillo’ and túwa ‘difficult’, have final unstressed vowels
which do not reduce in the same prosodic contexts. stay’! ‘squirrel’ and kiw’i" ‘tree’.
An analysis is necessary to explain the differing behavior in FM Totonac of the two types of
finaI vowels: those which are voiceless, often delete completely under suffixation and in rapid
speech (especially following fricatives and sonorants), and allow the postlexical prosodic process
of prepausal aspiration or glottalization of the preceding ‘final’ consonant (see §2.6.5.3); and
full, voiced vowels that do not reduce in any context and protect the preeeding consonant from
prepausal prosodic phenomena. It would be possible to call the words with non-reducing final
vowels lexical exceptions to the vowel reduction and prosodic spread/constricted glottis
processes. I prefer to analyze these vocalic release features or voiceless vowels as latent
segments in the sense of Zoll (1994), that is, as lacking a root node.
“The term “latent segment” should be considered to mean floating features which
materialize as full segments in contexts determined by the grammar.“ (Zoll 1994:7).
The notation convention used in this dissertation will be to transcribe such latent vowels as
voiceless both phonetically and underlyingly to distinguish them from the fully voiced final
vowels. Again, postlexically, these latent vowels appear as fully voiced vowels in connected
speech when they do not occur at a prosodic boundary (see §2.6.5.1 on postlexical vowel node
epenthesis).
Synchronically in FM Totonac, all final consonants must have associated floating V features,
except nasals, and sonorants in sonorant-vowel suffixes and in clitics whose vowel completely
deletes in certain contexts, specifically –ni" and –w! (see §2.6.4.4.3.1). It is lexically determined
whether nasal-final words release into latent vowels. The constraint against full vowels following
consonants with associated spread or constricted glottis features is seen in the fact that only
consonants followed by latent vowels may be phonetically aspirated or glottalized at prosodic
boundaries and in citation form. At the same time, latent vowels only appear following a
consonant with glottal features or aspiration. Latent vowels and aspirated/glottalized consonants
! ".!