Totonac languages

Totonac is a Totonacan language cluster of Mexico, spoken across a number of central Mexican states by the Totonac people. It is a Mesoamerican language and shows many of the traits which define the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area. Along with some 62 other indigenous languages, it is recognised as an official language of Mexico, though as a single language.

History

The Totonac people are an indigenous group native to Totonacapan along the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf of Mexico stretches from the Texan border to the Yucatán Peninsula. It includes the greatest topographic diversity in the country and contains a great variety of ecozones as well as microhabitats. The Totonac people share their territory with the Nahua, Otomí, and Tepehua, all of which have communities within the region. Totonacapan is located in east central Mexico between present day Puebla and Veracruz. The people of Totonac have migrated to various cities such as Veracruz, Puebla, and Mexico City. Totonac populations are also found in colonized regions of Uxpanapa in southern Veracruz and the state of Quintana Roo in the eastern part of the Yucatán Peninsula. The Totonac inhabit two different types of environments: cool and rainy mesas of high altitude and warm and humid coastal lowlands.

Name

There are some sources that claim that the term Totonac, as explained by residents, means "people that come from where the sun rises." Other explanations of the term consist of derogatory meanings that indicate little capacity or ability to understand. However, there are other interpretations of the term which state that Totonac consist of the explanation that toto translates to "three" while naco translates to "corazón" for the overall meaning of totonaco becoming "three hearts".

Classification

The most recent proposal for the classification of the Totonac languages separates Misantla from a core Central group, and further divides that group into Northern and Lowland–Sierra families.

Phonology

The following is the Totonac phonology from Huehuetla, Sierra Norte de Puebla.

Consonants

Distribution of the phonemes

/p/ bilabial stop
Two allophones:
voiceless bilabial stop
voiced bilabial stop, in free variation after a nasal consonant
/t/ alveolar stop
Two allophones:
voiceless alveolar stop
voiced alveolar stop, in free variation after a nasal consonant
/k/ velar stop
Two allophones:
voiceless velar stop
voiced velar stop, in free variation after a nasal consonant
/q/ stop uvular
Three allophones:
voiceless uvular stop
voiced uvular stop, in free variation after a nasal consonant
voiceless uvular fricative, in free variation after a fricative and in final position after the vowel /i/
/ʔ/ glottal stop
This phoneme appears only in final position after a vowel and tends to disappear in speech.
/l/ lateral sonorant
lateral alveolar sonorant
alveolar flap, in free variation before /a/
/n/ alveolar nasal
Three allophones:
alveolar nasal
velar nasal, occurs before a velar stop
uvular nasal, occurs before a uvular stop
/j/ voiced palatal sonorant
voiced palatal sonorant
voiceless palatal sonorant, in free variation in syllable-final position
/w/ voiced labiovelar sonorant
voiced labiovelar sonorant
voiceless labiovelar sonorant, in free variation in syllable-final position

Observation

The phoneme /ʔ/ presents a widely observed frequency within the Totonac languages spoken in the areas of Papantla and Xicotepec de Juarez. Crescencio García Ramos, in his work about the phonology of the Totonac of El Tajin, notes the mechanical character of the glottal closure and at the same time he points at the “operative importance” in certain positions. He also presents a series of occlusive glottalized consonants:
/pʔ/, /tʔ/, /kʔ/, /qʔ/, /tsʔ/, /tʃʔ/, /tɬʔ/.
In the variant that is studied here, there is an observed tendency to the disappearance of the phoneme /ʔ/; this notion is also mentioned by McQuown in the Coatepec dialect: “the phoneme /ʔ/ disappears under various circumstances”.

Vowels

/i/ front, high, closed, unrounded
Five allophones:
, , , ,
/iː/ front, high, closed, unrounded, long
Three allophones:
, ,
/a/ central, low, open, unrounded
Three allophones:
, ,
/aː/ central, low, open, unrounded, long
Two allophones:
,
/u/ back, high, closed, rounded
Five allophones:
, , , ,
/uː/ back, high, closed, rounded, long
Two allophones:
,

Morphology in Filomeno Mata Totonac

Morphology in Filomeno Mata Totonac includes inflection, derivation, and compounding. Adjectives in this language have reduplication, which can also be seen throughout the use of this language. Speakers prefer to use verbal expressions more generally throughout their everyday way of speaking such as using words like "'instead of ‘visitors’, tiintamimáana ‘those who are coming’; instead of ‘seamstresses’, tiintsapananáh ‘those who sew’."Filomeno Mata Totonac is a verb-centric language and includes non-verbal elements as well. Filomeno Mata Totonac marks subject and object on the verb. Nouns in this language have a variety of structures of morphology. Regarding pronouns, there are no gender distinctions within this language. "Only one set of personal pronouns exists which may be used for subjects or objects." The speakers of this language switch between the first person pronoun using either i-, a-, or e-. There is a contradiction between the language speakers of this language regarding the third person pronouns either using 'uu' or 'tsamá' because it can be used in different ways in a sentence.

Independent pronouns

Examples showing personal pronouns

Possession in Filomeno Mata Totonac

Regarding possession in Filomeno Mata Totonac, nouns can be inflected for possession however adjectives cannot be. With Kinship terms it always has possessive markers. It states that, " Body part nouns and nouns referring to items of clothing are also almost always possessed." The possessive prefixes are kin- for first person, min- for second person, and š- for third person. kan- is used when it is suffixed to the noun and this happens when a plural possessor is involved. This can be shown in the following table:

Singular	Translation	Plural	Translation
kin-túmin	'my money'	kin-tumin-kán	'our money'
min-túmin	'your money'	min-tumin-kán ‘	'your money'
š-túmin	he/she/its money'	š-tumin-kán	'their money'

It is common in this language that possessive affixation does not affect stress except in the noun 'house' which is ĉikị in Filomeno Mata Totonac. What happens with this particular word is that it the stress will shift into the prefix if it is 1st or 2nd person singular or take the plural suffix which will always carry the stress and it will look like "kinĉikkán ‘our house’, or minĉikkán for ‘your house’."When the noun referring to the possessor appears with the possessed noun, the order is POSSESSED-POSSESSOR, with the first noun affixed with possessive marker." This is consistent with the word order being VSO but can change to rule out adjective-noun word order in this case. When plural nouns are possessed, the possessive affixes occur outside of the plural morphemes. This is shown in the following table to give examples of this being portrayed.

Clitics in Filomeno Mata Totonac

Clitics are a morpheme of a word that also has syntactic characteristics. Clitics are used in different categories of negation/negative polarity items, aspectual adverbials and other adverbials as well. The aspectual enclitics contain =ts’ḁ meaning ‘already’ and =kú’ụ meaning 'just;still’. Proclitics and enclitics attach to word classes in this language. For negative intensifiers, tuu=, tii=, łaa= and čii= can attach to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs and numbers. There are other clitics that are proclitics such as maya meaning 'nothing but' and laa meaning 'like' that attach to only nouns. Examples of proclitics on how they are used in some sentences are shown in the following table.

Numerical system in Filomeno Mata Totonac

Filomeno Mata Totonac has a very interesting way of describing numbers and writing them out. It states that "the number roots from 11–19 are composed roughly of a ‘ten’ prefix and the numerals from 1–9. The numerals up to twenty prefixed by the general numeral classifier ’aq-, also used for spherical objects." The table below will only show the numbers from 1–20.

1	’aq-tím	11	’aq-kawítụ
2	’aq-tó'	12	’aq-kutó’
3	’aq-tutụ	13	’aq-kutútụ
4	’aq-tatị	14	’aq-kutátị
5	’aq-kítsis	15	’aq-kukítsis
6	’aq-čašán	16	’aq-kučašán
7	’aq-tuxún	17	’aq-kutuxún
8	’aq-tsayán	18	’aq-kutsayán
9	aq-naxátsḁ	19	’aq-kunaxátsḁ
10	aq-káw	20	’aq-pušám