The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

2.4.5 /o/. /o/ is a mid-back vowel that appears only in words borrowed from Spanish or from
other indigenous languages.
30) Examples of /o/
[t%éko] ‘father’ [buréko] ‘sheep’
[p%iritóra] ‘candle’ [sirínton] ‘type of cricket’
[tyósko] ‘kiosk’ [tóyum] ‘roadrunner’
2.4.6 Vowel variation. As noted in §2.4.6, certain lexical items show variation in the quality of a
vowel, either from speaker to speaker or within the grammar of a single speaker. It is especially
common with the voiceless latent vowels that follow word-final consonants.
31) Examples of vowel variation
[c"iin’a&] ‘pus’ [c"iin’i&] ‘pus’
[#tukít h a&] ‘corn gruel’ [#tukít h i&] ‘corn gruel’
[’aqac"óq h e&] ‘type of shrimp’ [’aqac"óq h o&] ‘type of shrimp’
[s"iip h a&] ‘type of plum’ [s"iip h i&] ‘type of plum’
[t%ílooq h e&] ‘rooster’ [t%úlooq h e&] ‘rooster’
[tsitsóq h o&] ‘red’ [tsutsóqo&] ‘red’
[c"utoq#] 'pull off' [c"itoq#] 'pull off'
[’ákit h i&] ‘I’ [’íkit h i&] ‘I’
[’ékit h i&] ‘I’
2.5 Phonotactics and syllable structure. As previously noted, onsets are required in all
syllables, and vowel hiatus is disallowed. There are no geminate consonants underlyingly. All
single consonants may appear word-initially. In word final position any single consonant except
the affricate tl is allowed. Consonant clusters occur morpheme-initially and –finally, but not in
morpheme-internal syllables. The maximal syllable in FM Totonac is CCCVVCCC. A sample of
syllable types is displayed in Table 2.5:
! #'!