A sketch of the grammar of space in Tzeltal

Abstract

Introduction Space in Mayan languages Mayan languages and cultures have a reputation for having highly elaborated conceptions of space and time. Two largely independent streams of research converge on this point: on the one hand, there are several articles and monographs exploring modern-day versions of ancient Mayan calendrical, divination, ritual and cosmological systems in their spatial and temporal dimensions (Villa Rojas 1973, Gossen 1974, 1986, Tedlock 1982, Vogt 1976). On the other hand, a number of scholars have argued that Mayan languages have highly developed – indeed, hypertrophic – linguistic resources for handling spatial concepts, which are particularly evident in the positional roots, directionals and numeral classifiers that most Mayan languages display in some form (Berlin 1968, Norman 1973, Martin 1977, 1979, England 1978). It has been argued that space is a ‘grammatical theme’ in Mayan languages, that is, an ‘underlying organizational principle’ that pervades the grammar (England 1978: 226); it is also a cultural theme pervading Mayan ethnographies. And, England argues, where such correspondences between linguistic and cultural themes are found, we are justified in expecting to find ‘a substantial and powerful aspect of the world view of a particular group’ (Ibid.). Some recent work attempts more systematically to link these two streams, the linguistic and the ethnographic. A good example is Hanks's (1990) analysis of the deictic system of a group of Yucatec Mayan speakers, embedded in the ethnography of how these Yucatec Mayans conceptualize domestic and local spaces and how they operate in their physical and social world.