International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka (ICLSL)

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    A Case Study on the Effectiveness of Oral Approach in Internalizing the English Tenses.
    (The Third International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka, ICLSL 2017. Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka., 2017) Sandya, B. M.; Atchuthan, Y.
    Writing sentences without making mistakes in the application of tenses is important to express the intended meaning. In Sri Lankan context, even though the students are learning English as a second language from the elementary level, and even at tertiary education, they make mistakes in English tenses. The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of oral approach to internalize the structure of tenses. Fifty first year students from the Faculty of Business Studies at Vavuniya Campus were selected as the random sample of the study and the study was conducted for three months using quantitative and qualitative research methods. Pre-tests and post-test were conducted to evaluate the students‟ progress. According to the pre-test, 43 students (86%) made mistakes in tenses while only 7 students (14%) formed accurate sentences using the tenses. Therefore, all the tenses in English were taught one by one and at the end of the teaching of each tense, 15 minutes were allocated for oral practice. Each student in the classroom was given a chance to produce at least 10 sentences orally and when they made mistakes, they were corrected by the researcher. After three months, a written test was conducted. This post-test revealed that 48 students, 96%, wrote sentences using the tenses correctly, while only 2 students, 4%, made mistakes again. Compared to pre-test, the number of students who wrote sentences using correct structure of tenses in the post-test increased by 41 which is 82% of the total sample. The number of students who made mistakes have been reduced to 4% which was 86% in the pretest. The results show the dramatic improvement of internalization of the tenses through oral approach. Students could form grammatically correct sentences promptly on various topics using correct structure of tenses. Further the students became very active, interactive and entertainers through the practicing in the classroom. Thus the study recommends that oral approach is more effective to internalize the English tenses.
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    Structure of Interrogative Sentences of Sri Lankan Sign language and Colloquial Sinhala language: A Comparative Study.
    (The Third International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka, ICLSL 2017. Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka., 2017) Assajithissa Thero, Kurupita.
    This paper is based on the Syntax of Sri Lankan (SL) sign language and colloquial Sinhala language. SL sign language is used by SL deaf people. According to linguistic studies, it is accepted and investigated that Sign language is also a natural language. As a natural language, its structure can be studied on a linguistic base. This research is mainly concentrated on one of those structural aspects of SL sing language where interrogative sentences are studied. SL sign language is not linguistically studied well. If linguistic studies are conducted towards SL sign language, it would be more fruitful to enhance linguistic knowledge of SL sign language. The aim of this study is to conduct a syntactic research of SL sign language in comparison to Colloquial Sinhala language. This research will also analyse how the secularities of Interrogative Sentences of SL sign language are related to colloquial Sinhala language. Data were collected by interviewing hearing impaired people who could read Sinhala. In addition, they were given several sentences to interpret in Sign Language. More than three people were interviewed for one sentence. Sign language work books were used as primary resources. Finally, sentences are investigated with comparison to colloquial Sinhala language. As a result of this research, it can be identified and established that every types of interrogative sentences of SL sign language shows a similar order even though there are a number of types and structures of interrogative sentences of colloquial Sinhala language. In conclusion, it can be stated that the structure of interrogative sentences of SL sign language is not complicated.
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    A comparative Study on the Structures of Natural Languages and Logical Arguments
    (University of Kelaniya, 2015) Weerawardhana, V.
    Language is the base in both Linguistics and Logic. The objective of the Logicians is not to study the natural languages but to study logical arguments in natural languages. However, identifying the structure of natural languages can be very much useful to make the correct deduction in logic. Therefore Semantics is important in both Linguistics and Logic. At the beginning Logicians tried to find out the logical patterns of natural languages, but most of the time they have seen the complexity, ambiguity, vagueness, and context based meaning of them. Therefore limited patterns of natural languages are considered in the formation of logically valid inferences in artificial, machine or formal languages. As well it is still a challenge to convert some components of natural languages into machine language .In order to face challenges in creating artificial languages, it is important to analyze the structure of both languages through a comparative study. In this study it is expected to identify sentence patterns and morphological symbols in both languages. Statement logical concepts and predicate logical concepts are taken in this research as logical languages.Stuctural linguistic analysis is done in this regard. The results of this study reveal that logical symbols abbreviate or shrink the meaning of natural languages in its well-formed formulas. In comparison of the Structures of the two languages, logical patterns can be seen morphologically and syntactically. Compositionality of the semantical component is also an important factor in the formation of logically valid arguments. Therefore this study supports to identify similarities and differences of the structure of the natural and machine languages .At the same time, studying semantics of natural languages and basic concepts of logic helps to analyze the language more efficiently and to generate smart machine languages.