148 Paulette Levy
MacKay adds that the heads of an NP (a) are the only category that can be inflect-
ed for possession and (b) can be satisfied by a word expressing a property concept,
inflected for possession, as its sole element (see ex. (7), below).
In Levy (1992), following Dixons (1982) suggestion to identify adjectives by
first identifying concepts that semantically express properties, I showed that, for
PT, adjectives could be defined on morphosyntactic grounds. Beck (1999, 2000),
reacting too to the possibility of a language that conflated adjectives with nouns,
very elegantly demonstrated their distinctiveness from nouns in a Northern var-
iety, Upper Necaxa Totonac (UNT). In this chapter I not only show that adjec-
tives are a part of speech morphosyntactically distinct from nouns in PT, but also
that adjectives can be distinguished, albeit with more subtle diagnostics, both in
Coatepec and in Misantla. The family furnishes an interesting case in the syn-
tactization of a lexical class, and provides support for Dixons suggestion (Chap-
ter i of this volume) that adjectives may be found in many languages in which
they did not seem to be a separate part of speech if the proper techniques are
employed.
- The language
PT is a polysynthetic language, with agglutinative morphology. It is head-mark-
ing at the level of phrases and clause structure. The only clause-level relationship
marked on the dependent is a general locative proclitic in the locative phrase. The
language is nominative-accusative, with two series of dependent pronouns, subject
and non-subject. Non-subject cross-references Patient/Theme of a transitive verb,
Beneficiary/Recipient of a ditransitive verb, or the Object introduced by one of
several applicatives. PT has a number of applicative affixes that introduce semantic
relationships which have no alternative expression as external prepositional phras-
es. While the basic, underlying constituent order is Verb-initial, there are pragmat-
ically determined variations. So we find XVS, XVO, and XVOA, with A often front-
ed for various pragmatic functions.
Within the NP, the order of elements is quite fixed: NP'= (DEM) (QUANT) (xa-)
(ADJ) (POSS-) [Nhead (NP)]. Possessive inflection is prefixed only to the head of the
NP. The specifier xa- and possessive inflection are mutually exclusive on the same
noun.
Nouns and verbs differ both syntactically and morphologically. Nouns are
heads of NPs that function as Subject, Primary Object, Secondary Object, and
Copula Complements (CC). Nominal inflections are Possession and Number.
Verbs take TAM inflection. Formally (both inflectionally and in terms of deriva-
tive morphology), verbs are stative (with two sub-classes, stance verbs and posi-
tionals) and active. There are no labile verbs; a change in valency is always for-
mally marked.