The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac
The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac
The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac
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Table 2.11 FM <strong>Totonac</strong> consonant inventory<br />
p t k q !<br />
m n<br />
ts c! tl<br />
s s! " x<br />
l y w<br />
FM <strong>Totonac</strong> lexical items differing only in sound symbolic segments almost always exhibit<br />
diminutive-augmentative semantic differences, with # <strong>and</strong> " usually indicating greater intensity<br />
than s, <strong>and</strong> q greater than k. However, the pairing <strong>of</strong> semantic content to particular segments is<br />
inconsistent; although " marks the higher intensity in many verb pairs, such as sqawi ‘he bends<br />
it’, "qawi ‘he bends something thick’, in several sets <strong>of</strong> color terms, such as #kayiw’! ‘green’<br />
<strong>and</strong> "kayiw’! ‘light green’, it indicates the lower intensity. Thus synchronically there is no clear<br />
directionality in intensity in any <strong>of</strong> these series. Sometimes a word with a dorsal stop <strong>and</strong> a<br />
fricative will show changes in both sound symbolic segments when augmentative semantics are<br />
involved, as in smukúku" ‘yellow’ <strong>and</strong> #moqóqo" ‘deep yellow <strong>of</strong> ripe fruit’.<br />
<strong>The</strong> most common categories <strong>of</strong> words to employ sound symbolism are verbs <strong>and</strong> to a much<br />
greater extent, three categories <strong>of</strong> ideophones: color terms; odor/flavor terms; <strong>and</strong> sound <strong>and</strong><br />
manner <strong>of</strong> motion adverbials (another ideophonic category <strong>of</strong> descriptive adjectives exists, but<br />
does not feature sound symbolic segments; see McFarl<strong>and</strong> to appear). Occasionally other word<br />
classes utilize sound symbolic phonemes to derive semantic pairs, such as c'í#iti" ‘hair(s)’ <strong>and</strong><br />
tsísiti" ‘little hair(s), or $ii$ ‘hot’ <strong>and</strong> tsiits ‘warm’, but this is relatively unproductive. Each <strong>of</strong> the<br />
ideophonic categories shows a particular pattern <strong>of</strong> reduplication, position <strong>of</strong> sound symbolic<br />
phonemes, stress pattern <strong>and</strong> vowel melody. <strong>The</strong> major sound symbolic categories are described<br />
in the following subsections.<br />
2.8.1 Color terms. Most <strong>of</strong> the major color terms have related minor color terms derived through<br />
sound symbolism, as shown in Table 2.12. Each <strong>of</strong> these terms, with the exception <strong>of</strong> ‘green’<br />
terms, exhibits partial reduplication, penult stress, <strong>and</strong> a single vowel (recall that high vowels<br />
lower to mid vowels adjacent to /q/).<br />
! *#!
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