Komunikacja migowa Głuchych w krajach bałtyckich: perspektywa lingwistyczna

ENSimilarly to other visual-spatial languages of the world, Lithuanian Sign Language (Lietuvių gestų kalba - LGK) and Latvian Sign Language (Latviešu zimju valoda - LZV) have evolved spontaneously in Deaf communities. They are not derived from the spoken Baltic languages, from which they differ not only in terms of modality (i.e. the visual-gestural, and not aural-oral channel of communication), but also, more importantly, in how their grammatical and lexical systems are structured. LGK and LZV exhibit all typical features of human natural languages, such as conventionality, creativity (an infinite number of utterances may be produced with a finite number of segments/signs), displacement (capability to communicate about things that are not present - spatially or temporally), and dialectal variation. The goal of this article is to present an outline of the most important facts about LGK and LZV. We view them as minority languages, through which the Deaf communities in Lithuania and Latvia express their identity and culture.