148

Verbal inflectional suffixes beginning with nasals
require a preceding vowel except that one suffix beginning
with /m/, 273 Imperative, is affected by the preceding
morphological environment (see 6-3.33). Verbal inflec-
tional suffixes ending in nasals may be assumed to have
an underlying final /a/ since it reappears before the
final suffix -lla ~ -ya, andin fact all nasal-final
verbal inflectional suffixes have allomorphs that end in
vowels in one or more dialects. Most verbal inflectional
suffixes ending in a vowel keep it before final suffixes
although they may lose it word-finally, but verbal inflec-
tional suffixes ending in /Vna/ or /:na/ and allomorphs
of 1+3 ending in /ta/ or /t"a/ (except in Calacoa) drop
the final /a/ before following suffixes except -lla ~ -ya.
The behavior of the final vowel of the 2+3 Imperative
suffix -ma and of a few other suffixes also involving the

2p varies dialectically.
4-2.2 Morphological conditioning

Noun suffixes and verbal derivational suffixes
specify whether a consonant or vowel will precede, but
(except for certain of the noun complement/relational
suffixes; see 5-3.31) do not control the retention or
loss of their own final vowel. Verbal inflectional
suffixes both specify the preceding environment and con-
trol the retention and loss of their own final vowel

(within the phonological limitations indicated above).