The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac

Description

Berkeley: University of California, 2009. - 2, XIV, 245 p. - (UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations)Filomeno Mata (FM) Totonac is a member of the Totonac-Tepehua family (eastern Mexico), spoken in and around the municipality whose name it borrows in the state of Veracruz. It is a polysynthetic, highly agglutinating, head-marking variety with VSO word order and complex verbal morphology that has not previously been described by linguists. This grammar is based on fieldwork conducted by the author between 2003 and 2009.The Totonac-Tepehua family is now widely considered to have no genetic affiliation with any other language family, although Greenberg (1987) proposed classifying it with Penutian, and it was earlier thought to be related to Mayan (see Campbell & Kaufman 1980 for the history and debunking of this hypothesis). It is divided into two main branches. The Tepehua branch comprises three languages, Huehuetla, Pisaflores, and Tlachichilco Tepehua. The Totonac branch has been posited to comprise four languages: Misantla, Papantla, Sierra and Northern. However, with the possible exception of Misantla, these divisions are more likely to be subbranches, each made up of various languages and dialects. The relevance of the Sierra-Northern division to the highlands varieties is unclear, since some highland varieties (e.g., Filomeno Mata) seem to have elements of both branches. More research is needed to determine the genetic affiliations of the dialects in this region and the larger groupings.