First Undergraduate Research Symposium (HUG 2015)
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Item The contribution of Kumaratunga Munidasa as an individual language planner(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, 2015) Randula, K.K.G.Language planning refers to deliberate and systematic attempts taken to solve the language problems of a speech community. Usually such measures in standardising a language’s structure and determining its political status are taken by a country’s political authority. Cumaratunga Munidasa (25th July 1887 - 02nd March 1944) was one of the greatest classical Sinhalese scholars of the 20th century, whose service to the Sinhalese language has been subjected to extensive studies in various disciplines. It has been observed that certain acts of Cumaratunga Munidasa reflect the features of a corpus planner, while his impact on promoting the Sinhalese language to the official language status has been of extreme significance. Since Cumaratunga’s contribution has not been substantially evaluated in the perspective of language planning, this study attempts to recognise Cumaratunga as an individual language planner. Data for the study were collected from writings of Cumaratunga ranging from paper articles to voluminous books. The language planning model proposed by E. Haugen (1983) was adapted in the evaluation process. In this study it has been observed that it is proper to recognise Cumaratunga Munidasa’s role in revitalising the Sinhalese language as the contribution of an individual language planner.Item Consequences of adopting a multiple language policy in a multilingual and multiethnic country: the case of India.(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, 2015) Perera, A.H.Language is one of the prominent resources that should be planned for the sociopolitical wellbeing of a multilingual and multiethnic country. This study intends to examine the consequences of adopting multiple language policy in such a country. India is a multilingual and multiethnic country where several hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages and dialects are spoken. Therefore India has been chosen as the sample of this study. Attempts have been made to examine the consequences of multiple official languages policy India, citing official records on the subject as the sources of data. Indian government has declared a number of regional official languages for each of the regional states while adopting Hindi and English as the official languages of the whole country. All judicial, administrative, and educational matters in regional states are carried out in the respective regional languages. Hindi and English function as the languages of the central government and facilitate communication between central government and regional states. This language policy has drawn success in maintaining the sociopolitical wellbeing of the country, but not in securing the future of regional languages. The long lasted predominance of Hindi and English has threatened the status and the future of the regional languages. Therefore one can hardly say that this multiple language policy has done justice to the conservation of those languages. Thus it is clear that multiple language policy cannot be regarded as the best solution to all the language related issues in a multilingual and multiethnic country.