Morphology

Upper Necaxa Totonac is a highly agglutinative language that makes use of both prefixes and suffixes in derviation as well as in inflection. There is relatively little morphophonemic irregularity except in the aspectual paradgims.

Nouns are not highly inflected, obligatorily marking neither number nor case. There is no grammatical gender, although counting nouns requires the use of a system of prefixal classifiers. Adjectives show optional number agreement with their modificands.

Verbs are inflected for one of four moods, three tenses, and four aspects, as well as for the number and person of both subjects and objects, as shown in the following example (inflectional morphemes are marked in blue; examples are given here in the practical orthography):

katasaníuj ti: tzej nakinka:ma'htaya:yá:n

ka– Ø–tasa– ní– uj– Ø
OPT– 1O– PL.O–3SG.S–help– IMPF– 2O

ti:
who

na– kin– ka:– Ø–ma'htayá:– ya:– n
FUT– 1O– PL.O–3SG.S–help– IMPF– 2O

‘let us call the one who will help us!’

In addition to their rich inflection, verbs also take a wide range of productive derivational affixes—including two causatives and four applicatives—and a set of twelve “quasi-inflectional” affixes which perform adverb-like functions in the sentence.

pó'htu naika:xte'hwi:li:hó kilakstín he: ja: ma'htín katika:la'hmílh

pó'htu
all

na–ik–ka:–xte'h–wi:li:–hó:–Ø
FUT–1SG.S–PL.O–leave–put–TOT–IMPF

kin–lakstín
1PO–children

he:
and

ja:
NEG

ma'h–tín
CLF–one

ka–ti–ka:–la'h–min–lh
OPT–UNR–PL.O–ALTV–come–PFV

‘I’m going to abandon all my children and never come back to them’

Morphemes of all types can be prefixes or suffixes, and a single inflected root can have a dozen or so affixes associated with it. Note also that the first stem here is a compound made up of the roots xte'h- ‘leave’ and wi:li: ‘put’, the latter imparting a resultative reading to the action denoted by the former.

1,2,3 = first-, second-, third-person; ALTV = allative; CLF = classifier; CMT = comitative; FUT = future; IMPF = imperfective; NEG = negative; O = object; OPT = optative; PFV = perfective; PL = plural; PO = possessive; S = subject; SG = singular; TOT = totalitive; UNR = unrealized.