The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

92) /ama anilo/ 93) /aqsqawini esu makatlaxanaa/
this ring demon o devil
[’amá ‘anílo] [’aqsqawiní ‘ésu makatlaxaná’a]
‘this ring’ ‘a devil or a demon’
In two exceptional cases, vowel deletion or shortening occurs instead of glottal stop epenthesis.
When negative polarity =a" follows NEG "aa=, the result is the loss of one mora: "aa"= NOT
YET. Also, one lexicalized exception exists, $in ‘s/he arrives here’ (< $i ‘here’ + ‘an ‘go’; cf.
$a’an ‘s/he arrives there’ < $a ‘there’ + ‘an ‘go’). Finally, with the verb ‘i’i" ‘s/he harvests it/buys
it/gives it as a gift’, glide insertion optionally separates the verb root from any vowel-final prefix:
tiiyí’i"/tii’í’i" ‘she passes by to harvest it’.
Unusually, glottal stop insertion is strictly unavailable at the root-suffix boundary. Either glide
epenthesis or vowel coalescence prevents hiatus in the right side of the root, depending on the
morpheme and the prosodic shape of the root. Only two suffixes are vowel-initial, the
transitivizer –ii (sometimes vowel harmonic –VV) and the imperfective aspect marker –aa.
In most Totonac varieties the imperfective is analyzed as underlyingly –yaa, homophonous with
the positional root meaning ‘standing’ from which it derives historically. In FM Totonac, several
pieces of evidence point to an underlying form without the initial glide: First, the –yaa allomorph
appears only after a vowel-final stem, (e.g., munu-yáa ‘we water’), with –aa following all
consonants, including n, (skin-áa ‘we request’). Since n deletion is exceptionless preceding all
sonorants and continuants in FM Totonac (see §2.6.1.1.1), if an -n final stem combined with an
imperfective suffix of the form -yaa, the expectation would be loss of the n, not the y. Instead,
the final n is retained and the –aa allomorph appears. Also, as will be seen, y epenthesis is found
with another suffix, the transitivizer.
Returning to the repair of vowel hiatus, at the stem-imperfective suffix boundary, glide insertion
is always the response.
94) /paati-aa/ 95) /c"ipa-aa/
suffer-IMPF grasp-IMPF
[paatiyá] [c"ipayá]
‘we suffer’ ‘we grasp it’
At the boundary between the root and the transitivizer morpheme, vowel coalescence is most
frequently found, with the final root vowel being deleted.
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