The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

Declarative:
[tá’ii s"ánati gabryéla]
'She gave Gabriela flowers.'
208) Example with stress shifted one syllable left on ‘because’, one right on verb
/tuu s"palakata ta-ta-lii-punqa-li& c"íki&/
what because 3SUB.pl-INC-INST-collapse-PFTV house
[túu s"palákata n tataaliiponqá n c"ík%i&]
Why did the houses collapse?
Declarative:
[s"palakáta tataliipónqa n c"ík%i&]
‘because the houses collapsed’
209) Example with stress shifted one syllable left on locative expression and on verb
/kii-ta-aqa#uu-li& k-ta#paan/
RT-INC-descend-PFTV LOC-ravine
[kiita’áqa#uu ktá#paan]
Did he go down into the ravine?
Declarative:
[kiita’aqá#uu kta#páan]
He went down into the ravine.
Much more research is required on this topic to discover, among other things, how it interacts
with intonation, what determines the directionality of interrogative stress shift and how aspectual
ambiguity is resolved.
2.8 Sound symbolism. Sound symbolism is pervasive in the phonology of FM
Totonac. It is especially prominent in ideophones, but has at least sporadic or diachronic
productivity throughout the lexicon. Three sound symbolic intensity series exist in the language:
a fricative series: s, s', "; a coronal stop-affricate series: t, ts, $, tl; and a dorsal-uvular stop series:
k, q (all are common cross-linguistically; see Nichols 1971). For comparison, the full consonant
inventory is repeated in Table 2.11, with sound symbolic segments bolded; note that all of the
coronal obstruents are involved in sound symbolism.
! *"!