ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I present an outline of Tojolabal surface morphology. Discussion in later chapters will assume some familiarity with these elements, to which the phonological and grammatical processes may be thought to apply. The nature of this introduction, however, is such that it ought to be regarded as an intermediate analysis to which numerous revisions will be made later. Rather than trace the analysis of each issue to completion, I have chosen to give a tentative but over-all review here so that the reader may rather quickly become acquainted with the character of the language. Since description of the word structure introduces one to a broad range of linguistic issues, I have elected to begin with a description of elements according to surface-structure morphological categories, but the reader should recognize that what is presented in this chapter in many instances is preliminary to the following three chapters and will be revised there. Further, the ease of presentation gained by this review exacts some payment from the narrative in that the continuity of the traditional presentation is violated.
