The Monuments of Prague in the Czech Deaf Culture and their Names in the Czech Sign Language

In this thesis I am focusing on geographical proper names, namely twenty Prague historical monuments. With those I am not only trying to determine whether they are known to the Czech Deaf culture, but also whether there are signs for them in the Czech Sign Language. In the first part I define propria (proper name), I describe how proper names are formed, how they function and how they can be categorized. Then I focus on the research, in which I first explain my approach and the way I recorded the acquired material. The most extensive section of the thesis is devoted to descriptions of signs of individual monuments, which I obtained during my research of the recordings with the Deaf respondents. The penultimate chapter is devoted to analyzing the results and additional information that I obtained as a verification of the obtained material by a Deaf linguist. The conclusion states what is clear from the results of analysis. The Czech Deaf culture does name the selected historical monuments just as the hearing culture does. Most signs of Czech Sign Language are passed down from generation to generation