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Item A Linguistic Classification of Buddhist Sanskrit Lexical Borrowings in Chinese(International Conference on Sanskrit and Eastern Studies, 2018 Department of Sanskrit and Eastern Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2018) Fernando, K.D.K.D.T.Sanskrit and Chinese are two genetically unrelated languages from two different language families. Sanskrit is an Indo-Aryan language whereas Chinese is a Sino Tibetan language. These two languages came into strong contact with the introduction of Buddhism and the translation of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. Accordingly, a number of Sanskrit words used in Buddhist domains entered the Chinese lexicon. These Buddhist Sanskrit borrowings are of two types. One type of these words refers to spiritual practices, or abstract ideas which are not native to China. The other type refers to material or concrete things which are not found in the Chinese culture. This study was conducted to perform a full-fledged linguistic classification of these Buddhist Sanskrit borrowings. Data for the study were collected from Guoyu Ribao's Loanwords Dictionary (1985) which contains 112 Sanskrit loanwords found in Chinese. The loanword classification criteria proposed by Einor Haugen (1950) and C. F. Hockett (1958) have been employed for the data analysis. Thus, four major categories of borrowings have been recognised as: (1). Foreign Words/ Adopted Borrowings – e.g.: शरीर > 舍利子, (2). Loan Words/ Adapted Borrowings – e.g.: भिक्षु > 必刍, (3). Loan Blends/ Semi-adopted Borrowings - e.g.: बोधिदृम > 菩提树, and (4). Calques/ Semantic Borrowings - e.g.: लोकिातु > 世界. Several conclusions were drawn from this classification. Most of the Buddhist Sanskrit borrowings in Chinese are Loan Words, i.e., Sanskrit words induced into Chinese with various formal alterations to assure compliance with Chinese phonology. The second largest category of borrowings is Calques, i.e. literary translations of Sanskrit words into Chinese. Foreign Words and Loan Blends are relatively fewer in number and less frequent in occurrenceItem Morphosyntactic Parallels and Contrasts in Sri Lankan Contact Language Participial Constructions(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Slomanson, P.The Sri Lankan contact varieties of Malay (SLM) and Portuguese (SLP) share features they do not share with other Sri Lankan languages, including pre-verbal functional markers for tense, mood and aspect (TMA) contrasts. Both contact languages also feature morphosyntactic phenomena related to finiteness that are absent from their lexical source languages (Malay) or organised differently (Portuguese), with the result that in the Sri Lankan language area, the grammars of these languages most closely resemble each other. There are similarities and contrasts in the form of conjunctive participles and periphrastic verbal constructions in both languages, constructions from which an information structure advantage is gained in the way an event sequence is conveyed and the events contrastively focused. In SLM, the affirmative periphrastic construction and its negated counterpart can be analysed as bi-clausal. The explicitly finite negation element marking the auxiliary interrupts its adjacency with the lexical verb. The clause containing the lexical verb, which is non-finite, can be questioned or echoed as an apparent ellipsis, with the finite auxiliary as a potential response. As in SLM, SLP has periphrastic verbal constructions and conjunctive participles, however the separability supporting a bi-clausal analysis is absent in SLP. There are also contrasts in the form taken by participles and in the role played by tense and (non-) finiteness-marking in the two languages. In SLM, the participle in periphrastic constructions is identical in form to the conjunctive participle that appears in temporally-sequenced adjunct clauses, whereas in SLP, the form of the participle contrasts in the two contexts, with the conjunctive participial suffix reflecting the default form in the Portuguese lexifier. In SLM, the periphrastic perfect construction consists of a (non-finite) conjunctive participle plus finite auxiliary, whereas in SLP, the verb and the auxiliary have the sametense/finiteness status.Item Origin of the Sinhalese composite verbs: a comparative study(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, 2015) Assajithissa Thero, KurupitaThe aim of this study is to examine the origin of Sinhalese composite verbs with reference to other Middle Indo Aryan Languages and Tamil language. The origin of Sinhalese composite verbs is extremely controversial. A number of scholars argue that the origin of these verbs should be a result of Tamil language contact into Sinhalese language. There are also a number of scholars who think that the origin of those verbs should be a result of Indo Aryan Languages contact because there are many languages in which composite verbs exist. This study tries to comparatively analyse the origin of Sinhalese composite verbs with regards to composite verbs in other M.I.A. languages and Tamil language. In brief, this study is on whether they are derived from Tamil language or Indo Aryan Languages. To study the derivation of composite verbs, comparative method has been used here objectively. Specially, in M.I.A languages like Pali, Prakrit languages, these verbs have been used to convey the meaning instead of one verb. It is true about Tamil language too. These verbs are compared to justify the origin of composite verbs by identifying the differences and similarities.This study reveals that the composite verbs are derived from M.I.A languages most probably from Pali. Morphologically, these verbs are used as word sequences like N+V, Adv+v, Adj+V, V+V etc. Which do not exist in Tamil language. In fact, the notion is very clear that the composite verbs in Sinhalese language are derived not because of Tamil language contact but because of M.I.A languages.