ARS - 2009

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    Archeological remains from Doranagoda vicinity in Gampaha District
    (Research Symposium 2009 - Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2009) Indika, M.K.A.
    This paper is based on a preliminary archaeological survey which covered four villages of Minuwangoda regional secretary division of Gampaha district including Doranagoda, Korase, Vatumulla and Asgiriya. Literary survey, field survey and interviews were carried out to understand ancient human activities of the relevant area. Archaeological remains of the area belong to a large chronological range from early historic period to the British period, which comprises inscriptions, coins, pottery, structural remains, caves with drip ledges and small scale tanks. Most of the artifacts are still unpublished and one inscription and two fragmentary inscriptions are among them. Largest hoard of the punch mark coins in Sri Lanka is the most important archaeological finding of the area. In comparison with that numismatic evidence, some literary evidence suggests to understand a possible historical background of the well developed mercantile activities of the area in early historic period. An palm leaf manuscript belonging to the category of ‘Vitti pota’ ,Which describes the history of the genealogy of prince Sumitta, who is the legendary founder of Doranagoda village and some selected events of Doranagoda raja maha vihara is an important historical source. But its authenticity and reliability can not be established due to the lack of other sources.
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    Determinants of profitability in banking sector in Sri Lanka
    (Research Symposium 2009 - Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2009) Pushpakumara, W.P.N.; Fernando, J.M.R.
    Banking industry has been changed dramatically in recent past with the new technological development, legal reforms, and environmental changes. These changes have led to increase in resource productivity, increasing level of deposits, credits and profitability. However, the profitability, which is an important criteria to measure the performance of banks. Accordingly, in this paper researchers have made an attempt to identify the key determinants of profitability of the banking sector in Sri Lanka. The objective of the study is to identify the key determinants of the profitability of selected banks and to find out what extend the selected variables describe the profitability of the banking sector. The researchers have selected Total Assets (TA), Share Capital (SC), Retained Profit (REP), Number of Branches (NOB) and Number of Products in the Portfolio (NOP) as independent variables and Profit Before Interest and Tax (PBIT) as the dependent variable. This paper adopt quantitative approach base on Secondary data which were collected through published financial statements. The research population is banking sector in Sri Lanka and the research is based on the listed banks in Colombo Stock Exchange. The data was collected over the period of 5 years covering 2004 to 2008. Correlation, regression, t test and ANOVA are the statistical techniques selected for analyzing the data. The result shows that the Total assets, Share capital, Number of branches and Number of products in the portfolio play a critical role in determining profitability and have positive correlation. The above independent variables collectively as a model sufficiently explain the profitability of the Banking sector.
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    An analysis of sound parameters for prosodic modeling in Sinhala text to speech synthesis
    (Research Symposium 2009 - Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2009) Dias, N.G.J.; Kumara, K.H.; Dolawattha, D.D.M.
    Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software and/or hardware. Text-to-Speech (TTS) is one of the speech synthesis technologies. Before a synthesizer can produce an utterance, several steps have to be completed. Among them, after computing the basic pronunciation from authographic text, prosody annotation should be performed. Finding correct intonation, stress, and duration from written text is the most challenging problem for most of the natural languages. These features together are called prosodic or suprasegmental features and may be considered as the melody, rhythm, and emphasis of the speech at the perceptual level. Unfortunately, written text usually contains very little information of these features and some of them change dynamically during speech. However, with some specific control characters this information must be given (at least some extend) to the speech synthesizer to produce enough natural speech of the target language. On the other hand timing at sentence level or grouping of words into phrases correctly is difficult; in many languages, prosodic phrasing is not always marked in text by punctuation, and phrasal accentuation is almost never marked. If there is no breath pauses in speech or if they are in wrong places, the speech may sound very unnatural or even the meaning of the sentence may be misunderstood. As an example, in Sinhala, the input string " wïu wdjo@ ” " can be spoken as three different ways changing the intonation patterns as angry, sadness and sarcastic; giving three different meanings to the listener. Here intonation means how the pitch pattern or fundamental frequency changes during speech. The prosody of continuous speech depends on many separate aspects, it may be twice as high as with male voice and with children it may be even three, such as the meaning of the sentence and the speaker characteristics and emotions. Therefore it is clear that prosody plays a major role in speech synthesis, and a deeper treatment of prosody is a must in any kind of speech synthesis. In this work, in order to develop generic models for prosodic synthesis in speech synthesis, we selected 150 possible sentences in Sinhala Language and recorded them according to the above three intonation patterns (i.e. angry, sadness and sarcastic) with a female native speaker who is a well trained person in Drama and Theater. Then we computed various speech parameters for above 150X3 sentences using PRAAT speech processing tool developed by www.praat.org. Hence we found that for all above 150 sentences there is an incremental pattern in the duration from Angry to Sarcastic. No regular pattern in Median, Mean, Standard Deviation, Minimum, and Maximum values of the Pitch parameter. Regarding the pulses, we computed the Number of pulses, Number of periods, Mean period, Standard deviation of period for each of the above sound files and we observed that there is no regular pattern in the parameter Pulses. For voicing parameter we computed the Fraction of locally unvoiced frames, Number of voice breaks and Degree of voice breaks. However for this parameter there were not regular patterns too. Then we computed the Harmonicity values as Mean autocorrelation, Mean noise-to-harmonics ratio, Mean harmonics-to-noise ratio and found that there is no regular pattern. After computing the mean-energy intensity of each sentences, we found that there is an incremental pattern in the Intensity by concerning the order Angry, Sarcastic and Sadness. Finally we computed the formant values as First formant, First Bandwidth, Second Formant, Second Bandwidth, Third formant, Third Bandwidth, fourth formant and forth bandwidth and found that there is no regular pattern in different formant parameters. Although there are no regular patterns in most of the above speech parameters, in order to develop a more natural sounding speech synthesizer, however these parameters should be annotated with basic pronunciation computed from the authograpich text in speech synthesis. Therefore in future we hope to develop more generic probabilistic models based on this analysis to model above speech parameters for Sinhala speech synthesis.
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    ආදී වාසි ළමා සමාජය පිලිබඳ අධ්‍යයනයක්
    (Research Symposium 2009 - Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2009) Rajapaksha, Saman
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    Performance inclusion in Sri Lanka’s trade with Developing Countries
    (Research Symposium 2009 - Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2009) Edirisinghe, S.D.
    International trade has been developed with the growth of the civilization as part of the human life. It is concerned with business transactions among the citizens of different nations. Although the international trade and globalization offer the world community more benefits, there also appear to have negative consequences ,particularly for low income countries. And developing countries differ widely among themselves. Due to the uneven distribution of the costs and benefits and as the result of the development of the trade and globalization ,developing countries are needed to find out new business partners. This study is focused on investigating performance of trade between Sri Lanka and other developing countries within the period 1977-2007(after introducing trade liberalization policies in Sri Lanka).Both deductive and inductive methods were used to analyze the data. Mainly five trading partners were demonstrated concurrently to the study and among them the highest place in the Sri Lanka’s trade was recorded by the group of Middle East countries within the considering time period. Western Hemisphere countries and African countries have recorded second and third place respectively. According to the study the most least contribution has been given in the overall trade was the U.S.S.R and Eastern European countries. Furthermore, study elicited the potential trade avenues and reflected rely on the several trading partners of the economy , after the liberalization . There can be seen a soaring transaction of trade among the developing countries after the period 1977 and it is obviously focal in the Middle East countries.
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    Managing human resources in university libraries in Sri Lanka: Appropriate styles and stratagies
    (Research Symposium 2009 - Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2009) Weerasooriya, W.A.
    This study was carried out to investigate the existing Human Resource Management (HRM) set up and to explore the possibilities and outcome for utilizing to improve the HRM in University Libraries in Sri Lanka (ULSL). Objectives of the study were to identify key issues related to HRM, to suggest some guidelines for formulating human resource policy for ULSL, to explore the human resources needs and necessary changing requirements of HRM in university libraries and to develop an appropriate HRM model for ULSL. The method used for this study was the descriptive research. Survey technique was used in order to collect data. The population of the study was the professional staff working in ULSL. Primary data was collected circulating two structured questionnaires among the Librarians and Senior Assistant Librarians (SAL) and Assistant Librarians (AL). The major focus was given for testing and verification of three hypotheses viz. 01. HRM is the most important factor for providing an efficient and effective library and information service in ULSL, 02. Professionals in university libraries prefer to participative management style than bureaucratic style of management, 03. Professionals prefer to work as teams in a more self-guided committed work environment in university libraries. To test the hypothesis 01, Librarians and SAL and AL were asked to mark the most important factor for producing an efficient and effective library service out of six factors and they stated that well trained, qualified and dedicated library as the most important factor. Within this background, a suggestion is made to implement more HRM awareness programmes for ULSL. It is proposed to formulate and implement a sound HRM policy for university libraries. For hypothesis 02, out of three management styles, majority of Librarians (70%), and SAL and AL 85% endorsed the statement “HRM functions and activities which belong to library domain should be dispersed among respective Heads/Sectional Heads, while holding full responsibility with the Librarian himself.” It manifests that ‘participative management style’ which is based on the principles of more collaborative approach is needed for ULSL. In testing 3rd hypothesis, out of four organizational structures, the highest responses (60%) were received by the Librarians for the 3rd model “a new cohesive and collaborative model, based more on the principles of teamwork with high commitment” The underline theory behind these three hypothesis is that Human Resource factor is to be given the prime concerned by the ULSL and the very human resources have to be handled with appropriate management styles, strategies and structures.
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    Dengue risk based on sociocultural/socioeconomic geographic factors in Kelaniya MOH area
    (Research Symposium 2009 - Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2009) Nadeeka, P.V.J.; Amarasinghe, L.D.; Gunathilaka, P.A.D.H.N.; Madushani, I.L.D.
    THIS STUDY INVOLVES GEOGRAPHIC, SOCIOCULTURAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC ANALYSIS CONDUCTED FOR THE YEAR 2008 DENGUE FEVER OUTBREAKS IN KELANIYA MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH (MOH) AREA. LOCATIONS OF THE RESIDENCE OF THE 120 DENGUE CASES REPORTED AT KELANIYA MOH OFFICE WERE OBTAINED USING GPS. A STRUCTURED QUESTIONNAIRE THAT INCLUDED 16 OF PRIMARY DATA WAS GIVEN TO EACH PATIENT HOUSEHOLD AFTER VISITING INDIVIDUAL OF THEM AT RESIDENCE. GEOGRAPHIC ATTRIBUTES RELATED TO DENGUE INCIDENCE WERE RECORDED CONCURRENTLY. PRIMARY DATA INCLUDED FAMILY DETAILS, AGE AND GENDER OF THE FAMILY MEMBERS, LIVING CONDITIONS, AWARENESS AND KNOWLEDGE ABOUT DENGUE, HEALTH CARE, HUMAN DWELLINGS, OCCUPATIONAL STATUS, MOSQUITO PROTECTION PRACTICES, ACCESSIBILITY BY ROAD, SANITATION PRACTICES, WASTE DISPOSAL MANAGEMENT AND FREQUENCY, CULTURAL PRACTICES REGARDING STORAGE OF WATER CONTAINERS, VEGETATION COVER AROUND THE HOUSES, AND INDOOR /OUTDOOR AEDES MOSQUITO BREEDING PLACES. MOSQUITO LARVAE COLLECTED FROM BOTH INDOOR AND OUTDOOR POOLS WERE REARED UNTIL ADULTS ARE EMERGED IN THE LABORATORY. RESULTS REVEALED THAT 86% HOUSEHOLDS HAVE PERMANENT RESIDENCE. PERCENTAGE INFECTED MALE: FEMALE RATIO WAS 48%: 52% WHICH IS NOT SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT. THE VULNERABILITY OF THE AGE GROUPS FOR DENGUE FEVER WERE FOUND AS 1-5 YRS (24%), 6-18 YRS (44%), 19-55 YRS (24%) AND MORE THAN 55 YRS (3%). THE ADULT MOSQUITO POPULATION CONTAINED 77.6% OF AEDES ALBOPICTUS ATTAINING INDOOR (20.7%) AND OUTDOOR (79.3%) BREEDING SITES WHILE 22.4% OF AE. AEGYPTI ATTAINING INDOOR (38.6 %) AND OUTDOOR (61.4%) BREEDING SITES. ONLY 32% OF HOUSE PREMISES WERE DENSELY COVERED WITH VEGETATION. RECORDED DENGUE CASES AND GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS WERE LINKED TO A GIS DATABASE AND PRESENTED IN DIGITIZED MAPS TO SHOW DENGUE RISK FACTORS IN KELANIYA MOH AREA.
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    Developing oral skills of students learning French as a foreign language
    (Research Symposium 2009 - Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2009) Gunawardena, C.P.
    This paper will focus on how to develop oral skills of Sri Lankan students who learn French as a foreign language. This topic is highly interesting as speaking skills are often under represented in the traditional classroom. This is mainly due to the fact that it is considered a less- academic skill than writing. A questionnaire was given to seventy university students studying French. The questions were aimed at summarizing the main difficulties faced by students when learning to speak French. A thorough study was also made on methodologies used in applied linguistics. It is important to elucidate the main issues related to the acquisition of oral skills mentioned by students and the emphasis will only fall upon the most pertinent issues such as the use of native languages (Sinhala and Tamil) and English in the classroom, over usage of translation, lack of interaction between teachers and students, problems of ignoring real communication, rigid teaching methods etc. Finally, the stress will be on the solutions which can be used to overcome the above mentioned problems. The bespoke solutions derive from teaching methodologies and applied linguistics theories like direct method, the audio lingua method, the behavioral approach, the nativist theories and Noam Chomsky’s theories etc.
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    Physical meaning and theoretical description of anomalous absorption of light ion partial waves by nuclear optical potential
    (Research Symposium 2009 - Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2009) Piyadasa, R.A.D.
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    Translation of humour for screen
    (Research Symposium 2009 - Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2009) Boralugoda, A.
    Due to its’ culture bound nature translation of humour is certainly one of the most demanding tasks for any translator. Plays on words, puns, double meaning, cultural references and the linguistic idiocyncassies of any language can prove to be a serious obstacle for the successful transfer not only of message but also of the effect and impact intended by the original. The translation of humour involves transporting the unique structure of joke into another language. Generally translation among languages that are culturally and structurally different pose a challenge and the translator is forced to adopt different techniques. When it comes to humour, the amount of humour present in the translated joke plays an important role. In other words if a well translated joke was bad in terms of level of humour present, it is evaluated as bad, while a badly translated joke with high content of humor it will be evaluated as excellent. Besides all these constraints imposed by the language and culture, when translating for cinema the task becomes really daunting. Here I intend to take a look at the limitations under which the translator in this type of specialized fields has to work and the different strategies implemented by screen translators when transferring humor.
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    දනගොබ ගිරි ලිපිය සහ පුරාවිද්‍යාත්මක ස්ථාන
    (Research Symposium 2009 - Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2009) Bandara, P.B.A.N.W.
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    An experiment on interference
    (Research Symposium 2009 - Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2009) Chandana, A.W.S.; Siripala, W.; de Silva, N.
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    Acquisition of the English article system by Sri Lankan second language learners of English
    (Research Symposium 2009 - Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2009) Kumarasiri, E.A.
    Many second language learners of English have trouble using the English article system properly. The primary causes for this phenomenon remain unclear. My research attempted to address this problem by examining the metalinguistic knowledge the learners employ when selecting articles in a given situation. This study attempted to understand better the process of making sense of the English article system by learners who are at different stages in their interlanguage development. Ninety Sri Lankan students with varying levels of proficiency following the Extension Courses in English at the University of Colombo participated. On the basis of an existing classification of English articles [a(n), the, 0], data on article usage were obtained The qualitative and quantitative analyses reveal a number of conceptual differences with regard to their considerations of the hearer’s knowledge, specific reference, cultural use etc., the influence of which causes errors in article use across different proficiency groups. The study revealed that the subjects, in spite of there being differences in the accuracy rates due to the proficiency levels, used the articles with confidence and accuracy when making specific reference. The cultural as well as generic reference of them remained problematic to the majority of the participants. In terms of the articles, a(n), seems to have been acquired more easily than the contradicting the view that the emerges early and a(n) later, preventing the “flooding” phenomenon usually experienced by L2 learners. Lowability level participants’ interlanguage teems with the zero article.
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    Relationship between formal grammar instruction and development of second language competence: a preliminary study
    (Research Symposium 2009 - Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2009) Dissanayake, S.A.R.R.P.
    Second language learning involves the development of a mental system of grammar, which enables the learner to communicate. In formal teaching, grammar rules are presented to the learner to facilitate the formation of this mental system. The general assumption is that these rules will be readily available for automatic language production in communication. A preliminary study was designed to assess the relationship between these rules presented in instructional settings and the development of grammatical competence. Thirty learners studying English as a second language in BAMS course of Gampaha Wickramarachchi Ayurveda Institute were randomly divided into two groups: experimental and control. Each group received three learning sessions: in the experimental group, the learners received formal instruction on the rules of reporting sentences, while the control group was only exposed to reading materials and activities where these grammar forms had been used. A pre-test, a post-test and a delayed post-test were conducted for each group. According to the comparison of pre and post test scores, a significant improvement (p<0.05) could be found only in the experimental group. However, the delayed post-test did not show significant improvement in any group. The results suggest that formal grammar instruction will have only an immediate effect on development of grammatical competence. This is possibly because the grammar rules presented in formal instruction have not been successfully incorporated into the long term memory of the learner. However, the study sample included only thirty students and therefore, we are not able to draw firm generalizations purely on the basis of these findings. Further studies can be designed to test the hypothesis that formal grammar instruction can have only an immediate effect.