ICLSL 2016
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Item Future Tense in Spoken Tamil and Spoken Sinhalese: A Comparative Analysis(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Subramaniam, A.Syntax differs from language to language. The second language learners find it hard to understand the syntax of the language they learn when it differs from the syntax of their mother tongue. Thus the similarities and differences of Tamil and Sinhalese languages in the future tense are being analysed through this study. One of the main similarities found out through this comparative study is that both Tamil and Sinhalese languages have a similar subdivision in Future tense: they are the „will‟ future, future perfect and future Continuous. On the other hand in Tamil, particles are being used to differentiate the future tense, where as verb suffixes and affixes are used in Sinhalese and further the present form is often used to refer to Future tense in Sinhalese. In Tamil, the Future verbs will take various forms as per to Case, Gender, Number and person. Nevertheless in Sinhalese a common verb form is used irrespective of the case, gender and number. The knowledge in the future function of these languages will give a clear idea to the learners and teachers of these languages and it will ease the teaching and learning process of these languages. The research area is limited to the tenses which are being used in the spoken context of the Sri Lankan Tamil and Sinhalese. The data for this study were obtained from books, articles, websites, and discussions.Item The Grammatical Aspects of Grade 10 Tamil Language and Literature old and New Syllabuses: A Comparative Analysis(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Srikantharajah, S.Linguistics is the scientific study of language which includes the study of sounds, words and grammatical aspects. The rules of a language are learnt as one acquires a language. These rules include Phonology, Morphology, Syntax and Semantics which are the branches of a language. Knowing a language encompasses this entire system. The grammatical aspects [morphology and syntax] are the major areas in language learning and teaching. The structure and the meaning of a language can be studied through grammatical aspects. On the other hand understanding the meaning of a word without knowing the semantics and pragmatics is meaningless. The linguists expect to encompass the concepts of modern linguistics with the concepts of traditional grammar in language teaching. After every eight years generally the school syllabi gets updated. In 2015 the ministry of education introduced a new syllabus for grade 6 and 10 students. Based on that a comparative research study was conducted to examine the grammatical aspects found in grade 10 old (2007) and new (2015) syllabi with a linguistics perspective. Consequently, it was found out that, some new linguistic aspects have been included in the new syllabus: Allophones, technical terms, types of adjectives and concord. Further, it was found out that some linguistic aspects which could have been included in the syllabus have not been added. With my paper I suggest the linguistics aspects which could have been included in order to uplift the academic level of the syllabus. Further, the grammatical changes existing in between the two syllabi will be compared through this paper.Item The Extending of Sinhala Diglossia under English Influence(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Premaratna, C.D.H.M.Diglossia, or the use of two varieties, namely High (H) and Low (L) of a language in a single speech community is widespread. The difference between the two varieties is that the non-standard L variety is used for everyday conversations, while that standard H variety is used for writing. This difference often occurs in phonology as well as in morphology and syntax. Most children from diglossic communities are usually exposed to the colloquial non-standard L variety during conversations at home and day-to-day activities, as the social setting determines that the children follow the language of their parents. Sinhala has been a diglossic language historically since the tenth century, under the influence of Sanskrit language at Polonnaruwa era. Since then differences between the non-standard form and the standard form have increased under influence of contact languages both from the East and West, up to today. This research paper examines the present condition of the Sinhala Diglossia and discusses how the gap between the two varieties has extended under the influence of English. This problem is examined under the sociolinguistic and basic linguistic theories of phonology as well as morphology and syntax. English became the sole official language in Sri Lanka from 1815 up to 1956, and a second language subsequently. Moreover, in 1987, under the present Constitution of Sri Lanka English was accepted as an official language under the name “Link Language” and it is a medium of instruction in education sectors as well. Alternatively, bilingual situation increases among Sinhala speakers. This shows repercussions in the structure of phonology, morphology and syntax of L variety as well as the H variety and it affects the Sinhala diglossic condition as well. It has significantly affected the quality of the writing skills of children as well as the adults and has also caused social problems between bilingual (Sinhala - English) speakers and monolingual (Sinhala) speakers.Item Subjects in Colloquial Sinhala(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Kariyakarawana, S.In most languages, including in literary Sinhala, subject of a sentence appear in Nominative case. In colloquial Sinhala however subjects can appear in several different cases in both intransitive (I) and transitive sentences (T) as Gair (1998), Kariyakarawana (1992) and many others have observed: 1 a. (I) miniha duwanawa man-NOM run-PRES PAST „The man runs‟ (T) siri ada apata ballek (wa) dunna Siri-NOM today us-DAT dog-INDEF-ACC give „Siri gave us a dog today‟ b. (I) minihata divenava man-DAT run-INVOL-PRES „The man runs (involuntarily)‟ (T) mata den aliyawa peenawa Me-DAT now elephant-ACC see. PRES „I see the elephant now‟ c. (I) miniha-va ganagata wetevi man-ACC river-DAT fall-OPT „The man might fall into the river‟ d. (I) ehee policiyen innawa there police-INSTR be-(animate) „There are police there‟ (T) aanduwen eekata aadara denawa Government-INSTR that-DAT support-PL give-PRES „The government give support for that‟ As seen above, notice nominative, dative and instrumental subjects occur with intransitive as well as transitive predicates. One other noticeable characteristic of Colloquial Sinhala is that equational sentences do occur without a copular (be) verb at all as in (2): (2) (a) Gunapala mahatteya honda guruwarayek Gunapala –mr-NOM good teacher-INDEF Mr Gunapala is a good teacher‟ There have been many attempts to bring these sentences under a unified analysis of syntax which explains their syntactic and semantic properties in a universal framework of phrase structure but it seem to pose serious problems to Case marking, INFL projection and Thera role assignment within a generative framework. This paper takes another look at the data under the Bio Minimalist framework that Chomsky (1995) proposes to minimise the syntactic machinery by subsuming syntactic properties under semantic and phonological cues which in essence determines the syntactic structure of the position of subjects in these clauses. In particular, we will argue that the Minimalist approach to such complex syntactico-semantic issues can reduce the burden of functional machinery and explain the learnability of non-nominative subjects in colloquial Sinhala.