The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

’uu’, túu kwanín ‘it, what I told you about’
tsamá lukunán ‘he fights (habitually)’
‘akinán i ktsukuniitáw ‘we have begun’
wi#inán qootnunáa ‘you pl. drink’
tsamá tatamóqos*i" ‘they fell’
No independent possessive pronouns exist. The possessive affixes are discussed in §3.3.2.1.
3.2.2 Demonstrative pronouns. There are two demonstrative pronouns in FM Totonac,
proximal ’amá and distal tsamá, which is also used as a 3 rd person personal pronoun. Some
speakers also use ’u’u" (§3.2.1). Both are also employed as adjectives.
2) ’amá wani-kán #-mákan móonq#nu
this say-REF 3POSS-claw owl
‘this is called the owl’s claw’
3) $iinóo wan-níi tsamá
then say-DAT that
‘then he says to that one . . .’
3.3 Morphological processes undergone by nouns and other non-verbal word classes. Nouns
may be inflected for plural number, possession and locative case; they may undergo body part
prefixation and several other fairly unproductive derivational processes; serve as a base for
clitics; and combine with other words to form compounds. Adjectives may be inflected for plural
number, be derived with body part prefixes and take clitics. Pronouns may be pluralized, as
noted in §3.2.1. Numerals are bound roots that require classifier prefixes (§3.5). All word
categories may take certain negation and negative polarity proclitics and aspectual enclitics.
Each of these morphological possibilities will be discussed in turn, as well as a range of deverbal
nominalization processes.
3.3.1 Pluralization. Most nouns in FM Totonac do not have plural forms, while all adjectives
and the first and second person independent pronouns do. The nouns referring to human beings
and one domestic animal, the dog, have plural forms, such as sqat! ‘baby’, laqsqatáan ‘babies’,
and $i$í’i" ‘dog’, lak$i$íin ‘dogs’. Deverbal agentive nouns comprise a large subset of nouns with
plural forms. Adjectives are pluralized when they modify a noun whose referent is plural, even
when the noun does not have a plural form.
In addition to human and dog-referring nouns, some nouns referring to body parts that occur in
pairs have a form unmarked for number that is most commonly used, another form that
specifically refers to only one of the two body parts, and another for both the paired parts
(§3.3.1.4). These latter two forms are infrequently used. Finally, I was able to elicit plurals for
locative nouns referring to plots of vegetable crops (§3.3.1.5).
! +(!