AbstractThis article argues that the geographically dispersed distribution of the minorities in the Baltic republics(apart from the Poles in Lithuania and the Russians in Northeast Estonia) constitutes an objective obstacle to provision ofterritorially based minority rights. However, the potential alternatives to the territorial principle are also rarely adopted. Thecultural autonomy model in Estonia and Latvia failed to be implemented in practice, while threshold rules (in respect oftopographical bilingualism, for example) are in force only in Estonia, and there with the highest threshold in Europe (50%). Thepaper aims to explain the reluctance to adopt these solutions by reviewing the main factors that affect language policyimplementation in general. It also considers the background to the debate over which languages need protection: the minoritylanguages within the Baltic States or the titular languages themselves (Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian), which at the globallevel are small and vulnerable. In general, the strictness of language policies is in inverse relation to the size of theminorities, with Lithuania being the most liberal and Latvia the most restrictive.

中文翻译：

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多民族语言背景下的领土和非领土安排

摘要本文认为，波罗的海共和国（除了立陶宛的波兰人和爱沙尼亚东北部的俄罗斯人）地理上分散的少数民族分布构成了提供基于领土的少数民族权利的客观障碍。然而，领土原则的潜在替代方案也很少被采用。爱沙尼亚和拉脱维亚的文化自治模式未能在实践中实施，而门槛规则（例如关于地形双语）仅在爱沙尼亚有效，并且在欧洲具有最高的门槛（50％）。本文旨在通过回顾影响语言政策实施的主要因素来解释不愿采用这些解决方案的原因。它还考虑了关于哪些语言需要保护的辩论的背景：波罗的海国家内的少数民族语言或名义语言本身（爱沙尼亚语、拉脱维亚语和立陶宛语），在全球范围内是小而脆弱的。一般来说，语言政策的严格程度与少数民族的规模成反比，立陶宛是最自由的，拉脱维亚是最严格的。