ICLSL 2016
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://repository.kln.ac.lk/handle/123456789/14246
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Language Acquisition Patterns: A Case Study of a Child Acquiring Sinhalese as the First Language(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Weerawardhana, V.Child language acquisition is an innate strategy which reveals the psychological base of human language. Innate hypothesis is the pre-knowledge of the language. Human beings are born with this ability of internalising the first language with the help of language Acquisition Device (LAD). Children acquire structural regularities of their mother language (L1) from their environment. This happens in the critical period of the language development which is identified as the period from first six months to three years. This research is a case study focusing on the nature and the patterns of acquiring the Sinhalese language as L1. The child was in its critical period of language acquisition and data was collected using electronic and manual transcription. Structural linguistic analysis and theoretical concepts of Transformational Grammar on language acquisition such as competence and performance, generalisation, simplification, deep structure and surface structure are employed as the methodology. Accordingly, the gradual development of L1 acquisition from 6 months to 24 months are discussed. Babbling, sound acquisition and patterns of one word utterances, two word and three word utterances are among the findings. A comparison with the previous studies reveal that the patterns of above utterances, generalisation and simplification are commonly visible in the acquisition period. Also, the child often proves that competence is greater than performance. The results of the study further highlighted some semantic, syntactic and morphological overgeneralisations. Thus, this study and its findings are of significant importance to psycholinguists, language therapists and to researchers interested in studying child language acquisition process.Item A Comparison of Particle “Ne” in Japanese and Sinhalese(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Balasooriya, B.A.D.N.Sinhalese students learning Japanese as a foreign language make many errors in particle usage, especially in the usage of particle “Ne” in their speech. Japanese language final particle “Ne ”and Sinhalese sentence particle “Ne ”is used in the same meaning, when the speaker assumes that he/she and the addressee have same status regarding the knowledge or belief about the piece of information being conveyed. Nevertheless there are other usages of “Ne” in both languages. For an example “Ne” is used to confirm something in Sinhalese: “Yamada mahata NE?”. However, when we translate it into Japanese it becomes “Yamada san desu KA?” Not “NE”. Therefore, students tend to use mix up Sinhalese “Ne” with Japanese “Ne” particle in their speech. Thus this study aims to identify different usages of Japanese “Ne” and Sinhalese “Ne”, what type of errors students make in using “Ne” in their Japanese speech and why they are making these errors. For this study, a group of Japanese learning students in the University of Kelaniya was selected and they were categorised according to the levels of their Japanese Language proficiency test results. All were given a particular dialogue to be made in concerned with the particle “Ne”. Their speeches were recorded and the data was analysed. The findings highlights that, overgeneralisation of Sinhalese “Ne” in Japanese context is the main cause for the errors made by students. In conclusion this research will help the students to identify the correct usage of “Ne” and will also be a guideline to conduct further research on oral communication.