The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

(including -qe’e and -qo’o). In the other cases, the glottal stop is epenthentic at an utterance
boundary (see §2.6.5.3).
86) /lii-an/ 87) /tuu=an/ 88) /s"-ti-an/
INSTR-go who-go PAST-CNTR-go
[lee’)n] [too’án] [s"te’án]
‘s/he takes it’ ‘he who goes’ ‘she should have gone’
Exceptionally, the low vowel of the extremely common root ’an ‘go’ becomes [)] when
preceded by the instrumental prefix lii-, whose vowels undergo lowering in this context. This is
seen in derived verbs such as lee’)n ‘take’ and liiliitsee’)n ‘smile’.
2.6.3.2 Low vowel centralization. Short a is disallowed in closed syllables if it carries either
primary or secondary stress. This is true even if the syllable is closed by a stop that releases into
vowel features prepausally. The repair is a change of quality to a mid centralized vowel that I
transcribe as Œ.
89) Examples of /a/ lowering
tlaawŒn ‘s/he walks’ sqalŒ" ‘intelligent’
lŒnk’a& ‘tall’ "wakŒk’a& ‘liver’
s%kŒm’ ‘his/her son’ kŒk'a& ‘greens’
2.6.4 Morphologically-conditioned constraints on vowels. Several processes affect vowels
only in certain affixes. Each of these is detailed in the following subsections.
2.6.4.1 No hiatus. Vowel hiatus is disallowed in all cases in FM Totonac, with the grammatical
response varying according to the prosodic boundary and the morpheme involved. On the left
edge of the word, glottal stop epenthesis prevents hiatus at all word-word, prefix-root and prefixprefix
junctures, with three exceptions discussed below. For further discussion of glottal stop
insertion at prosodic boundaries, see §2.6.5.3.
90) /kin-taa-aqonqs"/ 91) /ta-an/
1OBJ-COM-braid 3SUB.pl-go
[kintaa’aqóNqs"] [ta’án]
‘she braids my hair’ ‘they go’
! '+!