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The Center as Cultural and Grammatical Theme in Mam (Maya)

This article explores the general relationship of language and culture via the notion of centeredness, which the author suggests is a recurring cultural value instantiated in how the Mam (Maya) conceive of the world, both practically and philosophically. This article specifically looks at the constructed world of the Mam (and, more generally, the Maya), their homes and towns, and the metaphysical idea of being centered in life and in relationships with others. It is further suggested that centeredness serves as a formal grammatical theme in Mam, a basis and “center stake” from which deictic spatial notions are computed, and the author shows briefly how such a center is instantiated in the lexicon, the morphosyntax, and the discourse structure of Mam. The author concludes that language and culture are “interconstitutive, through overlap and interplay between people’s cultural practices and preoccupations and the grammatical structures they habitually employ (Enfield, 2002, pp. 3-4).”