The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

2.6.1.2 Lateral spirantization. Syllable-finally preceding a consonant and word-finally l is
optionally but usually spirantized, becoming ".
52) /#tantal’/ 53) /an-li/ 54) /#tulul/
naked go-PFTV thick
[#tantá#]/[#tantál’] [’a#] [#tulú#/#tulúl’]
‘naked’ ‘s/he went’ ‘thick’
In a prepausal position, most final sonorants are marked by an epenthetic constricted glottal
feature (see §2.6.5.3.2). When a prepausal l undergoes optional spirantization, it is no longer
eligible for glottalization. Thus the final segment of l-final lexical items at prosodic boundaries
can alternate between l’ and ", as shown above for /#tantal/ ‘naked’ and /#tulul/ ‘thick’.
2.6.2 Morphologically conditioned constraints on consonants. Included in this subsection are
phonological processes that apply only to a particular morpheme or range of morphemes. They
include uvular harmony; consonant degemination; and vowel epenthesis in illegal consonant
clusters.
2.6.2.1 Uvular harmony. The grammar of FM Totonac disallows the co-occurrence of k and q
within roots (§2.6.2.1), and also motivates a phonetic fricative-stop harmony process within
morphemes, as well as k-q harmony between certain prefixes and a root.
Within roots, the dorsal fricative x must assimilate phonetically in [±back] with a dorsal stop,
even at a distance:
55) Examples of dorsal assimilation
xaks ‘smell of burnt chile’
xóokon ‘type of mushroom’
qo(oonún ‘s/he coughs’
(aaláq h a& ‘rickety, weak’
In addition, an underlying /k/ in certain prefixes harmonizes with a /q/ in the root, with adjacency
again not required. The prefixes involved are the nominal pluralizer lak- and the related verbal
prefix distributive lak-, as well as eight of the 35+ body part prefixes (BPP), as shown in Table
2.9. Unusually, the BPP tan- ‘rear, bottom’ from tan’ sometimes appears as tank- or tanq-,
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