The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

2.7.1 Lexical stress. Stress is lexical in the 15% of the lexicon composed of monomorphemes.
Carolyn MacKay (unpublished manuscript, 2007) has proposed a stress rule for the Totonaco-
Tepehua family: primary stress falls on a final heavy syllable, otherwise on the penultimate
syllable. The definition of a heavy syllable differs somewhat across the family, but generally it
is a CVV or CV(V)C, where the final consonant is a sonorant (h, $, m, n, l, y, w). This proposal
fails in the case of Filomeno Mata Totonac. Whether we assume that final latent vowels count
for stress assignment or not (I assume they do not, lacking a root note), many monomorphemes
do follow the MacKay stress rule (recall that final long vowels become -V’V in citation form and
prepausally):
172) Examples of regular stress per MacKay’s rule
"tantál’a& ‘naked’ s%kayíw’a& ‘green’
looqóy’i& ‘crane’ kuyém ‘jicama’
’aaksán ‘oak’ papá’a& ‘moon’
qoolú’u& ‘old man’
tsíisa ‘morning’ kus%káyu ‘yucca’
’akáas%ka ‘pineapple’ kúyu ‘armadillo’
súwa" ‘black sapote fruit’ c%íwis" ‘stone’
c%íkic%i& ‘type of plant’
However, the stress in many monomorphemic lexical items is counter to the rule, with heavy
final syllables unstressed, or final light syllables stressed. Forms with the unpredicted stress
pattern comprise about 25% of the monomorphemes in my nominal database.
173) Examples of unpredicted stress per MacKay’s rule
s%tíilan ‘chicken’ sásan ‘skunk’
skáwaw’a& ‘dry tortilla’ pic%áwa’a& ‘eagle’
wíit"am ‘edible caterpillar’ nakú ‘heart’
c%aalí ‘tomorrow’ tsumuxáat h i& ‘girl’
"toxóx ‘backpack’ qawáac%a& ‘boy’
Because the number of monomorphemic nominals is low, and the number of exceptions to the
MacKay stress rule is high, I prefer to analyze stress as lexical. It is possible that the number of
monomorphemes is even lower than I believe at present. For example, many descriptive
adjectives end in what appears to be a reduplicated syllable, such as spuxúx ‘straight’ or latáta"
‘thin’. If this is a morphological construction that imposes final stress, then a significant number
! )#!