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

common ancestor Common descent is a concept in evolutionary biology applicable when one species is the ancestor of two or more species later in time. According to modern evolutionary biology, all living beings could be descendants of a unique ancestor commonl ...

of the Totonacan languages of

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

. It was first reconstructed using

comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards ...

s in 1953 by Evangelina Arana Osnaya. Some linguists have proposed a link between the Totonacan 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 In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some l ...

stops 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 pai ...

. * 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 s ...

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