6 Adjectives in Papantla Totonac 163Each of the three basic DIMENSION adjectives employs a different nominal plural
suffix and, when attested for other varieties, the suffixes are cognate (e.g. Misantla
Totonac kii'k-sun-ta'n 'small, young, pF; MacKay 1999:359), so if one interprets this
as a retention, the nominal plural marking on DIMENSION adjectives must be very
old. I do not have yet an explanation for double marking in this semantic domain,
but the Totonacan irregularities are an important piece of data for the prehistory
of the area (see footnote 8).
3.5. AGE CONCEPTS
Both sa:sti' 'new' and aqlhchu 'old (thing)', adjectives for inanimates, are clearly in
the adjectival category. Not so the lexical items for stages in life, which are bicat-
egorial: they function both as nouns and as adjectives. Stage-in-life concepts for
animates that function as adjectives are shown in (29).
(29) qu:lu 'old (man)'
cha:t 'old (woman)'
qa'wasa 'young (boy-male)'
cu'ma:t 'young (girl-female) '
Stage-in-life terms behave like nouns in that they can be heads of NPs modified
by adjectives, (30), while stacking of adjectives is practically impossible (Levy 1992,
Beck 2000). They take possessive inflection (31), but unless something clearly con-
tradicts this interpretation from context, the preferred reading under such circum-
stances is a kinship relationship.
(30) kkd:kxilhi [cha':tu'tu lanka'laqqu:lun]^P nak tijya
k-ka:-akxil-lhi [cha':-tu'tu lanka'laq-qu:lu-n]^P nak tijya
i-OBj:pl-saw.it-cpL NUMCL:hum-three big DiST-old.man-pl LOC road
T saw three big men on the road.'
(31) milh kinqu:lu/kincha:t/kinqa'wasa/kincu'md:t
min-lh kin-qu:lu/kin-cha:t/kin-qa'wasa/kin-cu'ma:t
come-cpL iposs-old.man/iposs-old.woman/iposs-boy/iposs-girl
'My husband/wife/son/daughter came.'
Stage-in-life terms behave like adjectives in their ability to modify attributively
within an NP, without further structural apparatus, with several specialized func-
tions: indication of the sex and stage-in-life cycle of animals, the creation of more
specific denotations for types of stages in the social status of humans, as shown in
(32). Or else, they are used as address forms equivalent to 'Mr' or 'Mrs' in English,
but with a connotation of respect, as in (33). Frequently, the form for 'mister' is qu:
ru-ci:n, the suffix being an honorific borrowed from Nahuatl.