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The Totonacan languages (also known as Totonac–Tepehua languages) are a family of closely related languages spoken by approximately 290,000 Totonac (approx. 280,000) and Tepehua (approx. 10,000) people in the states of Veracruz, Puebla, and Hidalgo in Mexico. At the time of the Spanish conquest Totonacan languages were spoken all along the gulf coast of Mexico. During the colonial period, Totonacan languages were occasionally written and at least one grammar was produced. In the 20th century the number of speakers of most varieties have dwindled as indigenous identity increasingly became stigmatized encouraging speakers to adopt Spanish as their main language.

The Totonacan languages have only recently been compared to other families on the basis of historical-comparative linguistics, though they share numerous areal features with other languages of the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area, such as the Mayan languages and Nahuatl. Recent work suggests a possible genetic link to the Mixe–Zoque language family, although this has yet to be firmly established.

Internal classification

The family is divided into two branches, Totonac and Tepehua. Of the two, Tepehua is generally considered to consist of three languages—Pisaflores, Huehuetla, and Tlachichilco—while the Totonac branch is considerably more diverse. MacKay (1999) divides Totonac into four divisions, based on García Rojas (1978):

• Papantla Totonac: spoken in El Escolín, Papantla, Cazones, Tajín, Espinal, and other towns along the Gulf Coast of Veracruz.
• North-Central Totonac: spoken roughly between Poza Rica in Veracruz and Mecapalapa, Pantepec, and Xicotepec de Juárez in Puebla.
• South-Central Totonac: spoken mostly in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, including the towns of Zapotitlán de Méndez, Coatepec, and Huehuetla in Puebla.
• Misantla Totonac: spoken in Yecuatla and other communities outside the city of Misantla.

As of 2023, Ethnologue recognizes 12 languages in the Totonacan family, three Tepehua languages and nine Totonac. This classification is the basis of the latest version of the ISO language codes for Totonacan, although some of these classifications are disputed.

The Mexican Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (INALI) recognizes 10 distinct languages or "linguistic variants" in the family, 3 Tepehua and 7 Totonac

Coyutla Totonac is grouped with South Central Totonac by INALI while Tecpatlán Totonac is included in the North Central Totonac group. Other recent attempts at classification have suggested that some of these divisions, particularly North Central, Costal, and South Central, and are far too broad and include varieties that might also be classified as separate languages.

A further drawback of the Ethnologue and INALI classifications is the lack of lower-level subgroups beyond the two-way division into Totonac and Tepehua. In the Totonac branch of the family, Misantla is the most distinctive, and the remaining languages form a more closely related group. Divisions amongst the latter group, which might be referred to as "Central Totonac," are unclear, though most researchers agree that there is at least a three-way division between Northern, Southern/Sierra, and Lowland/Coastal varieties. Recent efforts at reconstruction and evidence from lexical similarity further suggest that Southern/Sierra and Lowland group together against Northern, although this is still uncertain, pending more exhaustive investigation. The most recent proposal for the family is as follows:

• Tepehua
  • Pisaflores
  • Huehuetla
  • Tlachichilco
• Totonac
  • Misantla
  • Central Totonac
    • Northern Totonac
      • Upper Necaxa
      • Tecpatlán Totonac
      • Zihuateutla Totonac
      • Cerro Xinolatépetl Totonac (also known as Ozumatlán)
      • Apapantilla Totonac (also known as Xicotepec)
    • Lowland–Sierra
      • Filomeno Mata
      • Lowland Totonac (many varieties, incl. Papantla)
      • Sierra Totonac (also known as Highland Totonac)
        • Coatepec
        • Coyutla
        • Huehuetla Totonac
        • Ozelonacaxtla
        • Olintla
        • Zapotitlán de Méndez

Lexical comparison also suggests that, for Tepehua, Pisaflores and Huehuetla may be more closely related to each other than either is to Tlalchichilco.

MacKay and Trechsel (2018) provide the following internal classification:

Totonac-Tepehua

• Totonac
  • Sierra Totonac: Zapotitlán, Coatepec, Huehuetla (Chilocoyo del Carmen), Caxhuácan, Ozelonacaxtla
  • Papantla Totonac: El Escolín, El Tajín, El Carbón, Papantla
  • Northern Totonac: Apapantilla, Patla, Chicontla, Cacahuatlán, Filomeno Mata, San Pedro Tlaolantongo
  • Misantla Totonac: Yecuatla, San Marcos Atexquilapan, Jilotepec
• Tepehua
  • Tlachichileo Tepehua: Tlachichileo, Tierra Colorada, Chintipán, Tecomajapa
  • Pisaflores Tepehua: Pisaflores, El Tepetate, San Pedro Tziltzacuapan, San José el Salto
  • Huehuetla Tepehua: Huehuetla (Hidalgo), Barrio Atzlán, Linda Vista (Mirasol), Mecapalapa (Puebla)

Phonology

There is some variation in the sound systems of the different varieties of Totonac and Tepehua, but the following phoneme inventory can be considered a typical Totonacan inventory.

Consonants

This consonant inventory is essentially equivalent to that reconstructed for proto-Totonacan by Arana Osnaya (1953, with the exception of the two back fricatives, /x/ and /h/. Most modern languages phonemically have only one of these, but show some allomorphic variation between the two, with one or the other being considered basic. However, Coatepec Totonac is reported to have both phonemes, and more recent reconstructions of the proto-Totonacan consonant inventory have proposed that both were present in that language. The glottal stop is a marginal phoneme in most of the languages and is posited primarily for morphological reasons. The phonological system is fairly typical of Mesoamerica.

Vowels

Most Totonacan languages have a three-vowel system with each quality making distinctions of length and laryngealization. The following is the "typical" Totonacan vocalic inventory.

Tepehua has lost the phonemic laryngealization of vowels and has ejective stops where Totonac has creaky vowels preceded by stops. Some Totonac languages have five-vowel systems, having developed /e/ and /o/ phonemes, whereas in others and are clearly allomorphs of /i/ and /u/, respectively, conditioned by proximity to uvular stops or fricatives.

Grammar

From a typological perspective, the Totonac–Tepehua family presents a fairly consistent profile, and exhibits many features of the Mesoamerican areal type, such as a preference for verb-initial order, head-marking, and extensive use of body part morphemes in metaphorical and locative constructions. The Totonacan languages are highly agglutinative and polysynthetic with nominative/accusative alignment and a flexible constituent order governed by information structure. Syntactic relations between the verb and its arguments are marked by agreement with the subject and one or sometimes two objects. There is no morphological case on nouns and many languages in the family lack prepositions, making use instead of a rich system of causatives, applicatives, and prefixes for body parts and parts of objects. Possession is marked on the possessed noun, the head of the NP. Otherwise, nouns are uninflected, number being an optional category and grammatical gender being absent from the languages. Numerals quantifying nouns bear classificatory prefixes, something that is unusual cross-linguistically as affixal classifiers tend heavily to be suffixes. Totonacan languages are also known for their use of sound symbolism.

Causatives and applicatives

Totonacan languages have a wide assortment of morphemes for increasing the valency of a verb.

Causatives

All Totonacan languages have at least one causative morpheme, a prefix ma:-:

Filomeno Mata Totonac

tiː=nuː

REL:H=ahora

š-ta-maː-aq-stuq-maː-na

PAST-3PL.SUB-CAUS-head-gathered-PROG-3PL

aqšáːq

head

tiː=nuː š-ta-maː-aq-stuq-maː-na aqšáːq

REL:H=ahora PAST-3PL.SUB-CAUS-head-gathered-PROG-3PL head

‘those who were gathering heads’ Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);

Pisaflores Tepehua

čaʔan-ɬi

arrive.there-PFV

maa-lakȼ’in

EVI-see

lii-ta-maa-ɬkuula-taa(ɬ)=ča

COMP-3PL.SUB-CAUS-burn-PF=CL

čaʔan-ɬi maa-lakȼ’in lii-ta-maa-ɬkuula-taa(ɬ)=ča

arrive.there-PFV EVI-see COMP-3PL.SUB-CAUS-burn-PF=CL

‘He got there and saw that they had made a fire.’ Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);

In many of the languages, the causative prefix is regularly or obligatorily associated with a suffix:

Upper Necaxa Totonac

tsa̰x

just

ḭk-maː-ka̰tsíː-niː-yaː-n

1SG.SUB-CAUS-know-CAUS-IMPF-2OBJ

mat

QTV

wan

say

tsa̰x ḭk-maː-ka̰tsíː-niː-yaː-n mat wan

just 1SG.SUB-CAUS-know-CAUS-IMPF-2OBJ QTV say

‘ “I'm just letting you know”, he says.’ Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);

In some languages like Upper Necaxa, the suffix is analyzed as part of the causative morpheme, but in others it is treated as a separate transitivizer.

Dative/benefactive applicative

One of the most frequently used valency-increasing affixes in the Totonacan languages is the dative or benefactive suffix:

Ozelonacaxtla Totonac

na-lḭːn-ni-ka̰n

FUT-take-BEN-INDEF.SUB

i

JNCT

tʃu

PTCL

ʃ-tʃuh

3PO-tortilla

na-lḭːn-ni-ka̰n i tʃu ʃ-tʃuh

FUT-take-BEN-INDEF.SUB JNCT PTCL 3PO-tortilla

‘They will take him his food.’ Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);

Cerro Xinolatépetl Totonac

ta-maqá̰n-ni-lḭ

3PL.SUB-throw-BEN-PFV

čúčut

water

nak=šušúm

LOC=piedra

ta-maqá̰n-ni-lḭ čúčut nak=šušúm

3PL.SUB-throw-BEN-PFV water LOC=piedra

‘They threw water for her on the hot stones.’

Comitative applicative

All the languages of the family have a comitative construction in which both an actor and a co-actor of a verb are specified. For instance, in Huehuetla Tepehua a verb such as tamakahuːn 'stay, be in a place' is intransitive but can take a comitative prefix to form a verb ta̰ːtamakahuːn meaning 'stay with someone', someone being the co-actor:

Huehuetla Tepehua

haː

INT

laː-y

poder-IMPF

k-ʔa-lak-t’aː-tamakahuːn

1SUB-PL-3PL.OBJ-COM-quedar:PFV

haː laː-y k-ʔa-lak-t’aː-tamakahuːn

INT poder-IMPF 1SUB-PL-3PL.OBJ-COM-quedar:PFV

‘Can I stay with you guys?’ Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);

Similarly, the Papantla Totonac verb muxuː ‘bury something’ is transitive but becomes ditransitive when it takes the comitative prefix:

Papantla Totonac

na-k-ta̰ː-muxuː-yaː-n

FUT-1SUB-COM-meterlo-IMPF-2OBJ

na-k-ta̰ː-muxuː-yaː-n

FUT-1SUB-COM-meterlo-IMPF-2OBJ

‘I will bury her with you’ Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);

Instrumental applicative

The third applicative prefix that is shared across the family is analyzed in most of the languages as an instrumental applicative and is used to add an object used as an instrument or a means to a clause:

Olintla Totonac

INTJ

INTJ

liː-láq-paqɬ-ɬi

INST-DST-break-PFV

tʃíwiʃ

stone

ta-laq-pítsi-ɬi

INCH-DST-split-PFV

INTJ liː-láq-paqɬ-ɬi tʃíwiʃ ta-laq-pítsi-ɬi

INTJ INST-DST-break-PFV stone INCH-DST-split-PFV

‘So he broke the rock with it, it was split.’ Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);

Misantla Totonac

kit

I

čaa=ču

just=CL

ut

that

ik-lii-ta-riku-la(ɬ)

1SUB-INST-INCH-rich-PFV

wḭn-ɬkak̰

this-ash

maa-wan

EVI-say

kit čaa=ču ut ik-lii-ta-riku-la(ɬ) wḭn-ɬkak̰ maa-wan

I just=CL that 1SUB-INST-INCH-rich-PFV this-ash EVI-say

‘ “I just got rich with (i.e. selling) those ashes”, he says.’ Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);

In some of the languages, the instrumental can also be used for the expression of motives:

Upper Necaxa Totonac

ʔeː

and

čuːnúː

so

paɬ

if

tsḭnʔs-ya̰

be.hungry-IMPF:2SG.SUB

liː-ta̰sá-ya̰

INST-vocalize-IMPF:2SG.SUB

pus

INTJ

ʔeː čuːnúː paɬ tsḭnʔs-ya̰ liː-ta̰sá-ya̰ pus

and so if be.hungry-IMPF:2SG.SUB INST-vocalize-IMPF:2SG.SUB INTJ

‘ “And if you're hungry, that's why you cry out, then.’ Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);

Tlachichilco Tepehua

porke

because

laq-ɬuw

CLF-much

tumin

money

ɬiː-k’uč’u-kan-ɬ

DIR-cure-PASS-PFV

porke laq-ɬuw tumin ɬiː-k’uč’u-kan-ɬ

because CLF-much money DIR-cure-PASS-PFV

‘Because they cured him for a lot of money.’ Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);

As seen in the last example, this prefix is ɬi- in Tepehua languages rather than liː- as it is in Totonac, and in Tlachichilco and Huehuetla it is analyzed as a directional ("DIR") rather than an instrumental. The prefix seems to be less frequent in Tepehua than in Totonac.

Body-part prefixation

The Totonacan languages exhibit a phenomenon similar to noun incorporation whereby special prefixing combining forms of body-parts may be added to verbs. When these prefixes are added, they generally serve to delimit the verb's locus of affect; that is, they indicate which part of the subject or object is affected by the action.

Huehuetla Tepehua

waː

FOC

naː

ENF

maː

RPT

laʔapuː-tanuː-y

face-put.in-IMPF

š-laʔapuːtanuːti

3PO-mask

waː naː maː laʔapuː-tanuː-y š-laʔapuːtanuːti

FOC ENF RPT face-put.in-IMPF 3PO-mask

‘He put the mask on his face.’ Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);

The prefixes can also be used to specify the shape of an affected object:

Papantla Totonac

an-li

go-PFV

tuku

what

wan-ni-kan

say-BEN-INDEF.SUB

ča̰ː-ka̰ː

shin-cut

tasun

birch

an-li tuku wan-ni-kan ča̰ː-ka̰ː tasun

go-PFV what say-BEN-INDEF.SUB shin-cut birch

‘He went to, what do you call it?, cut a birch tree,’

It is worthwhile to note that the prefixation does not decrease the valency of the verb, differentiating this process from true noun incorporation as the term is usually understood.

Another important role that bodypart prefixes play in Totonacan languages is in the formulation of expressions of the spatial location of objects, which combine a part-prefix with one of four posture verbs (words for ’sit’, ‘stand’, ‘lie’, and ‘be high’):

Upper Necaxa Totonac

ta-a̰kpuː-wila-nan-ɬ

3PL.SUB-crown-sit-PL-PFV

čiwíš

stone

spuːn-niːn

bird-PL

ta-a̰kpuː-wila-nan-ɬ čiwíš spuːn-niːn

3PL.SUB-crown-sit-PL-PFV stone bird-PL

‘the birds are sitting on the rock’

These constructions alternate with expressions using the independent (full) form of the part as a preposition-like element:

Upper Necaxa Totonac

líbɾu

book

ḭš-a̰kpúː-n

3PO-crown-NM

mesa

table

wiːɬ

sit

líbɾu ḭš-a̰kpúː-n mesa wiːɬ

book 3PO-crown-NM table sit

‘the book is on the table’ Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);

In the last sentence, the independent form of a̰kpuː- 'crown' is formed by combining this prefix with a base -n which is sometimes (as here) analyzed as a nominalizing suffix. Because words for body parts are inflected for possession, a̰kpuːn 'crown' has a third-person singular possessive prefix, linking it to mesa 'table', the object on whose crown the book is located (see the section below on Possessive constructions).

Possessive constructions

Possessive constructions in Totonacan languages are marked on the possessed noun rather than on the possessor noun:

Upper Necaxa Totonac

ḭš-kṵ́šḭ

3PO-corn

Juan

Juan

ḭš-kṵ́šḭ Juan

3PO-corn Juan

‘Juan’s corn’ Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);

The person of the possessor is indicated by a prefix and the number of the possessor by a suffix, as shown by the follow paradigm from Upper Necaxa:

In several of the languages, kinship terms and words referring to parts of the body and objects are inherently possessed—that is, they are obligatorily marked for a possessor. When an inherently possessed noun is used in a generic expression, a special indefinite possessor prefix (ša- in most of the languages that have it) is used—e.g. Upper Necaxa šapúškṵ 'an elder brother/elders brothers in general'.

Numerals

Numerals in Totonacan languages are bound roots that require a classificatory prefix which changes based on the type, shape or measure of object being counted. This is illustrated for one of the languages Upper Necaxa Totonac in the table below:

In total, Upper Necaxa has around 30 classificatory prefixes.

The following table compares the numeral bases of six Totonacan languages.

Sound symbolism

A prominent feature of Totonacan languages is the presence of sound symbolism. The most common (but by no means only) sound-symbolic pattern in Totonacan involves fricative alterations, typically /s/ ~ /š/ ~ /ɬ/ and occasionally /ts/ ~ /č/ ~ /š/ correlated either with increasingly more energetic or forceful action or with the size of an event participant, as in the following examples from Upper Necaxa Totonac:

Comparative as well as language-internal evidence suggests that the pattern of consonantal alternations may have their origins in affixes indicating grade—s- ‘diminutive‘, š- ‘medium’, ɬ- ‘augmentative’). In general, the productivity of the sound-symbolic alternations is highly variable within and across languages of the family, and many languages preserve for a given stem only one of a set of two or three alternates that can be reconstructed for proto-Totonacan.

Totonacan vocabulary

The following selection of Proto-Totonacan reconstructions and descendants is taken from MacKay and Trechsel (2018), using data from several other studies. The reconstructions and descendants are written in Americanist notation.

Media

Totonacan-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio station XECTZ-AM, broadcasting from Cuetzalan, Puebla.

References

1. Reid & Bishop 1974.
2. Anonymous 1990.
3. Lam 2009.
4. ^ Brown et al. 2011.
5. ^ MacKay 1999.
6. García Rojas 1978.
7. Eberhard, David M.; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2023). Ethnologue: Languages of the World (26th ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
8. INALI 2008.
9. Población de 5 años y más hablante de alguna lengua indígena y número de localidades por variante lingüística según sexo [Linguistic Variants of Mexico by Gender, 2000] (PDF) (Report).
10. ^ Beck 2011.
11. ^ Levy & Beck 2012.
12. ^ Arana Osnaya 1953.
13. Ichon 1969.
14. ^ MacKay, Carolyn J.; Trechsel, Frank R. (January 2018). "An alternative reconstruction of Proto-Totonac-Tepehua". International Journal of American Linguistics. 84. The University of Chicago: 51–92. doi:10.1086/694609. S2CID 148972240.
15. Aschman 1946. sfn error: no target: CITEREFAschman1946 (help)
16. McQuown 1990.
17. Davletshin 2008.
18. Aikhenvald 2003.
19. McFarland 2012, p. 278.
20. MacKay & Trechsel 2012a, p. 112.
21. Beck 2012, p. 202.
22. Beck 2012.
23. Roman Lobato 2012, p. 338.
24. Andersen 2012, p. 186.
25. Smythe Kung 2012, p. 78.
26. Levy 2012, p. 375.
27. Tino 2012, p. 297.
28. MacKay & Trechsel 2012b, p. 135.
29. Beck 2012, p. 236.
30. Watters 2012, p. 56.
31. Watters 2012.
32. Smythe Kung 2012.
33. Levy 1999.
34. Levy 1992.
35. Smythe Kung 2012, p. 81.
36. Levy 2012, p. 353.
37. Mithun 1984.
38. Beck 2011, p. 94.
39. Beck 2004, p. 12.
40. ^ Beck 2011, p. 47.
41. Beck 2004, p. 19.
42. Chan.
43. Levy 1990.
44. (See MacKay 1999, McQuown 1990, Levy 1987, Bishop 1984, Smythe Kung 2006, McFarland 2012, and Beck 2008.
45. Beck 2008, p. 8.
46. Beck 2008.
47. (see McQuown 1990, Beck 2008, and Brown et al. 2011).

External links

• Upper Necaxa Totonac Project
• "CLAS postgrad researcher Lucia Brandi in publishing first for Mexican indigenous language, Kgoyom Totonaco". SOCLAS Blog. 2012-07-25. Retrieved 2012-08-07.

Bibliography

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• Mesoamerican languages
• Totonacan languages
• Agglutinative languages
• Totonac
• Language families