6 Adjectives in Papantla Totonac 161(c) Misantla (MacKay 1999)'
/hun-puu-suku'k/ 'there is a small hole'
/hun-puu-xuku'k/ 'there is a medium hole'
/hun-puu-lhuku'k/ 'there is a big hole' (p. 113)
/cuku'nku'/ 'cool'
/chuku'nku'/ 'cold' (p. 37)Further evidence for the morphological and semantic differentiation of property
concepts in the whole Totonacan family is that the Misantla Totonac intensifier ciit
co-occurs with verbs and property concepts only, and not with prototypical nominal
denotations (MacKay, p.c.). Furthermore, when one examines pluralization tech-
niques in both Misantla and Coatepec, property concepts are pluralized with lak-l
laq- (MacKay 1999:353-4, with a few exceptions, like the word for 'maize'; McQuown
1990:108). As McQuown incisively notes while discussing plurality techniques:
El prefijo /lak-/- [.. .] (,jtal vez, de preferencia, con aquellas bases nominales mas
comunmente empleadas como atributivas?) ...
[The prefix /lak/- [...] (maybe preferentially with those nominal bases more often
employed attributively?) trans. PL] (McQuown [1940] 1990:108)
This difference lends support to Dixon's (Chapter i of this volume) claim that the
diagnostics might be rather subtle in some languages, but a careful analysis might
uncover an adjective class for many languages for which there were claims that
they had no adjective classes at all. The differences among the Totonacan languages
are not about whether property concepts exist as an adjective class or not, but
rather in their degree of syntactization.
3.4. DIMENSION ADJECTIVES
Adjectives expressing DIMENSION form a very large class in PT because the three
basic DIMENSION terms, two of them independent monomorphemic items: lanka
'big', lhma:n 'long', and the third, a bound root, -cu: 'small', combine productively
with Part morphemes—a class comprising about ninety items—to create a very
large set of more specific terms by composition. A small selection is given in (27).
(27) lanka' 'big'
ti:-lanka' 'wide (something in a continuous line, like a road)'
paq-lanka' 'wide, as aboard'
pu:-lanka' 'wide, from the inside'
tu:-lanka' 'thick, as a book, a board'
cha':-lanka' 'thick, a cylindrical object' (e.g. a log, leg)
paj-lanka' 'broad (the space between two parallel things)'
(^7) MacKay states: "This process is not nearly as productive as that described by Bishop and Levy.
[...] Furthermore, the variation does not always coincide with a corresponding change in meaning'
(1999:113). Nevertheless, observe that when there is change in meaning, the prediction holds: 'size' for
entity denotations, 'intensity' for property concepts (and verbs).