Lexical, quasi-inflectional, and inflectional compounding in Upper Necaxa Totonac * David Beck, University of Alberta Compounding, the combination of two potentially independent stems to form a single word-level morphological unit, is generally assumed to be a morphological process restricted to the realm of word-formation. This paper uses data from Upper Necaxa Totonac which show that lexical verb-verb compounding that forms new lexemes is in fact a relatively limited process in that language. Compounding is instead widely used for the formation of both quasi-inflectional and inflectional wordforms, the latter representing a unique example of the co- opting of single-word asymmetrical verb serialization to form part of an otherwise affixal inflectional paradigm. (1) Introduction Compounding, the combination of two potentially independent roots or stems to form a single word-level morphological unit, is generally assumed to be a morphological process restricted in its uses to the realm of word-formation (e.g., Plag 2003; Lieber 2005). Other morphological processes such as affixation, tonal alternation, apophony, reduplication, etc., are known to not be so restricted, and are found used as means for both word-formation (derivation) and inflection. There seems to be no logical reason, however, why compounding should not be just as versatile, or why it could not be employed in principle for purposes other than the formation of new lexemes—and, indeed, constructions characterized as “single-word serial verbs” (de Reuse 2006; Aikhenvald, this volume) seem to conform to the idea of what non- * The author would like to thank those people who have contributed to this paper as it has developed over several incarnations, in particular Alexandra Aikhenvald, Paulette Levy and Teresa McFarland, as well as the organizers and audience of the Special Session on Complex Predicates at the 2003 Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas. This paper also owes a great deal to discussions with Igor Mel’čuk, without whose interventions this would have been a very different paper indeed. I would also like to thank my consultants in Patla and Chicontla, without whom this paper would never have existed at all. La'halhu:ma:tsá. Funding for this research was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. (2011). Lexical, quasi-inflectional, and inflectional compounding in Upper Necaxa Totonac. In Alexandra Aikhenvald and Pieter Muysken (eds.), Multi-verb Constructions: A view from the Americas, 63–106. Leiden: Brill.