Junior Research Symposia
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Item The Contribution of Cumaratunga Munidasa as a Neologist(Department of English, University of Kelaniya, 2015) Randula, G.CumaratungaMunidasa (25th July 1887 - 02nd March 1944) was one of the greatest classical Sinhalese scholars of the recent times, remembered over years owing to the remarkable service rendered by him in a number of disciplines. He isadmired by many as the first individual to recognise the need of new Sinhalese technical terms capable of imparting the knowledge of modern technical and scientific concepts introduced to the Sinhalese speech community during the past century. Still, no commendable attempt has been made to examine his role as a neologist. Therefore this study attempts to undertake the task. An adequate corpus ofdata was collected for examination by referring toa number of books and paper articles written by Cumaratunga. It was observed thathe had followed many a morphological processes in coining neologisms, which reflect a number of salient features that one should take into consideration in coining Sinhalese technical terms. Since a great mass of neologisms coined by Cumaratnga have gained currency in the day-to-day discourses, further studies should be encouraged, concerning the morphological processes and standards maintained by him as a neologist.Item Morphological processes in the language of Facebook(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, 2015) Mallawaarachchi, I.A.Social networks including Facebook®, Twitter® and Instagram® have gained popularity throughout the world and thus have emerged with distinct cultures of their own. The fact that interactions on them are done ‘virtually’ without one to one communication emphasises the significance of written medium of communication in social media. This stance is evident in the culture of Facebook where a considerable number of Sri Lankans are engaged in social networking. Online chatting, posting various updates, captioning photos and videos are done through texts, thus ‘language’ plays a key role in the communication that takes place. Therefore, a remarkable linguistic culture has emerged, with numerous ‘new words’ entering the language every day. Accordingly this study concentrates on the usage of English particularly by Sri Lankans who interact through Facebook. However, in the instances where borrowings are concerned, the influences from and upon Sinhalese are also discussed. Various social and cultural implications were taken into consideration in order to analyse the semantic changes and culture – bound expressions. The proposed study is a participant observation in which the researcher conducted the analysis while actively participating in the activities that happen on Facebook. A number of Facebook profiles of both Sri Lankan and foreign users, Facebook chats, Facebook pages that are administered by local and foreign users and the design of the website in general are thus considered the primary source whereas the literature on morphological processes and the language on the internet serves as the secondary source. The analysis of these new words exposes various morphological processes, which are compounding, initialism, acronym, semantic expansion, affixation, blending, semantic shift, functional shift and borrowing. Remarkably, existing words are employed to create new words and new meanings rather than coining entirely new words. A significant number of morphological processes attempt to shorten longer phrases and sentences.