International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka (ICLSL)
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Item The Sidath Sangara: A Diachrony - Embedded - Synchronic Grammar(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Premaratne, A.The Sidath Sangara (SS.) is the earliest existing Sinhala grammatical treatise. Scholars attribute it to the thirteenth century. Monastics schools (Pirivena) and other indigenous education traditions have been using it as the sole authority to teach traditional Sinhala grammar. The treatise provides an analysis of an earlier phase of the Sinhala language. Consensus of opinion is that it represents the language of verse or the poetic language. This derives from the fact that the mediaeval poetry makes use of the same linguistics variety as described in the SS. By the time it was composed, this variety had limited itself to verse writing and prose writing employed a more developed form of language with elaborated vocabulary rich of Sanskrit loan words. However, this paper argues that the SS. describes not a stylistic variety of the mediaeval Sinhala, but the language that derives from old and middle Indic stages. The SS. itself mentions it as Siyabasa (Own-language) and Wilhem Geiger (1931) refers to it as Proto-Sinhala, the earliest phase of the language which shows independent, autonomous characteristics. It appears that the Proto-Sinhala had reduced itself to a variety of literary register by the time the SS. was composed. A question arises whether the SS. is a synchronic or a diachronic grammar. This paper points out that it is mainly a synchronic grammar, but the author of the treatise was well aware of the historical evolution of the language. The diachronic aspect of it will be highlighted in the light of the historical linguistic studies during the last century.Item A Comparative Analysis on Word Formation Processes in English and Sinhala(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Dhammadassana Thero, KosgamaWord formation is a process which makes a new word by changing exiting one or adding something to exiting word. It makes a new word. Forming new words is a most influential process to develop a language and to continue it as a live language. There are number of word formation process according to morphology and those processes can be seen in both Sinhala and English languages. Affixation, compounding, conversion, borrowing, blending and clipping are some of them. This study is an effort to find the similarities and dissimilarities of word formation processes between English and Sinhala languages. Thus, the present research aims to study the word formation processes mainly in terms of the two languages in order to discuss the similarities and dissimilarities between them. The oldest available grammar book in Sinhala, “Sidath Sagara” helps to find out the grammatical concept of the forming word in Sinhala and a number of books have been written in English which reveal the word formation processes of it. As the methodology both English and Sinhala books are used and after going through those books the concepts of the forming words can be analysed. those word formation processes can be compared and the research is based on a literature study, which takes a quantitative plane.