6 Adjectives in Papantla Totonac 1532.1.5.
While adjectives can modify a noun directly, nouns cannot be attributive modi-
fiers to other nouns directly. To attributively modifiy another noun, a noun must
take the Specifier xa-, as shown in (na). The examples in (lib) without the pres-
ence ofxa- are ungrammatical.
(11) (a) xa-lu:wa kuxi' (b) lu:wa kuxi'
DET-worm corn
'corn worm' (i.e. a type of worm)
xa-tukuwi:ni pa:xkwa tukuwi:ni pa:xkwa
DET-day Easter
'the day of Easter'
xa-maya:k mi-xa'nat maya:k mixa'nat
DET-liana iposs-vanilla
'the liana used to tie the vanilla vine with'
xa-li:wa kuyu li:wa kuyu
DET-meat armadillo
'armadillo meat'
2.1.6.
Adjectives marked with the specifier xa-, in NPs with an overt nominal head as in
(12), are (b) restrictive as opposed to (a) qualifying. Adjectives by themselves can-
not be the only overt lexical element in an NP; they need to co-occur with xa-, as
shown by the ungrammaticality of (nd);^4 and when they coocurr with xa-, they
have a restrictive reading as shown in (nc). In (nc), xa- has a specifying func-
tion, entailing that the speaker presupposes that the set to which the null head be-
longs—the flowers—is identifiable by the speaker.
(12) (a) klakaski'n smukuku xa:nat
k-lakaski'n-a: smukuku xa:nat
i-want.it-iCFL yellow flower
T want yellow flowers.'
(b) klakaski'n xasmukuku xa:nat
k-lakaski'n-a: xa-smukuku xa:nat
i-want.it-iCFL xa-yellow flower
T want, of the flowers, the yellow ones.'
(c) klakaski'n [xa-smukuku]^
k-lakaski'n-a: xa-smukuku
i-want.it-iCFL xa-yellow
T want the yellow ones.'
(d) *k-lakaski'n smukuku
(^4) I analyse (nc) as a null-head NP, i.e. [xa-smukuku P]NP (see Levy looib for argumentation).