Proto-Totonacan or Proto-Totonac-Tepehua (abbreviated PTn or PTT) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the

Totonacan languages The Totonacan languages (also known as Totonac–Tepehua languages) are a Language families, family of closely related languages spoken by approximately 290,000 Totonac (approx. 280,000) and Tepehua people, Tepehua (approx. 10,000) people in the ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

. It was first reconstructed using comparative methods in 1953 by Evangelina Arana Osnaya. Some linguists have proposed a link between the

Totonacan The Totonacan languages (also known as Totonac–Tepehua languages) are a Language families, family of closely related languages spoken by approximately 290,000 Totonac (approx. 280,000) and Tepehua people, Tepehua (approx. 10,000) people in the ...

and Mixe–Zoque language families; therefore making Proto-Totonacan a sister language of Proto-Mixe–Zoque and descendant of Proto- Totozoquean.

Phonology

Consonants

; Notes * MacKay and Trechsel (2018) add ejective

stops Stop may refer to: Places *Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States * Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina Facilities * Bus stop * Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck dri ...

and

affricates An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. ...

. * Davletshin (2008) and Brown et al. (2011) add /ʔ/ and /h/.Davletshin, A. (2008). Classification of the Totonacan languages. Paper read at the conference "Проблемы изучения дальнего родства языков (к 55-летию С. А. Старостина)" Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, 25–28 March 2008. MacKay and Trechsel (2018) accept /ʔ/ but reject /h/.

Vowels

; Notes * Brown et al. (2011) accept this vowel inventory. * MacKay and Trechsel (2018) reject laryngealized vowels in Proto-Totonacan. They argue that laryngealized vowels in the

Totonac languages Totonac is a Totonacan language cluster of Mexico, spoken across a number of central Mexican states by the Totonac people. It is a Mesoamerican language and shows many of the traits which define the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area. Along with som ...

are too infrequent and erratic after fricatives and sonorants to support their reconstruction.

Lexicon

The following Proto-Totonac-Tepehua reconstructions are from MacKay and Trechsel (2018). :

Notes

References