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Item Present Tense in Jaffna Tamil and Sinhala –A Contrastive Study:Based on Comrie‟s Point of View.(The Third International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka, ICLSL 2017. Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka., 2017) Senthuran, S.; Wijeratne, W.M.The aim of this research is to find out the similarities and dissimilarities between present tense in Jaffna Tamil and Spoken Sinhala languages. This study is significant as tenses are not similar in all languages. Sinhala has two tenses: past and non-past, whereas Tamil has three: present, past and future. According to Comrie‟s views, tenses are of two categories namely, absolute tense and relative tense. Tamil and Sinhala languages have the absolute and relative tense categories. Present tense is under the category of absolute tense. Data were collected from written documents and novels. The sample consists of hundred students from University of Jaffna and University of Kelaniya. Collected data were analysed using structural linguistic method, and descriptive and contrastive analysis methods, taking in to consideration Comrie‟s views on tenses. A number of similarities and dissimilarities between present tense in the two languages are identified. Similarities such as present forms to express future time reference, and both languages having the present tense suffixes and time adverbs to indicate time of an event were highlighted. Further, dissimilarity including the agreement of present tense forms in Tamil with their subject in number, gender and person, unlike in spoken Sinhala were identified. .Item Future Tense in Jaffna Tamil: Based on Comrie‟s Point of View.(The Third International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka, ICLSL 2017. Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka., 2017) Senthuran, S.There are different types of tense systems in languages of the World. In Tamil language, morphologically there are three tenses namely: Present, Past and Future tense. According to Comrie‟s views, tenses are categorized as Absolute tense and Relative tense. Relative tense has two sub categories as pure relative tense and absolute – relative tense. Absolute and relative tenses described in Comrie‟s theory are found in Tamil language: Present, past future, present progressive, past progressive, future progressive. Still tense and not-yet tenses are functioned as absolute tenses. Absolute tense means that all events are related to the present moment (time of speaking). Its reference point for the location of situation is present moment. The aim of this study is to identify the special features of future tense in Tamil language and different usages of future tense in Tamil language. This research involves descriptive method. Primary data was collected from the informants of the Jaffna Tamil native speakers through the participant observation method. Secondary data of this research were collected from related novels and books. Collected data was analysed using structural analysis and thematic analysis method. The findings revealed that future tense has special features. In Jaffna Spoken Tamil, more future tense aspects are expressed than in Comrie‟s views. Comrie mainly analyses the aspect of future tense of English and other languages. However, according to Comrie‟s theory, future tense aspects agree with Jaffna spoken Tamil. As far as Tamil is concerned, in spoken context, , the future time reference, the time adverbs, present tense forms, future suffixes and whole sentence meanings indicate the future time reference.Item Past Tense in Jaffna Tamil and Sinhala: A Contrastive Study(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Senthuran, S.Sri Lankan nation consists of varied cultures, languages and religions. Tamil and Sinhala are the major languages spoken in Sri Lanka. Sinhala belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family and Tamil belongs to the Dravidian language family. Morphology is two fold, namely noun morphology and verb morphology. Tenses play a main role in verb morphology. Generally tenses are not similar in the structure of all languages. There are many different types of tense systems in the languages of the world. Morphologically there are three different tenses in Jaffna Tamil. They are present tense, past tense and future tense. In spoken Sinhala there are two main tenses, namely past tense and non-past tense. Non-past tense includes present and future tenses. The main Objective of this paper is to bring out the similarities and the dissimilarities between past tense in Jaffna Tamil and Sinhala. This research involves contrastive and descriptive methodology. Primary data was collected through self- observation and personal interview method. The important sources of this research are secondary resources such as related books, journal articles and conference proceedings. The Tamil data represents the author‟s own dialect of Jaffna Spoken Tamil and the Sinhala data represents the standard spoken Sinhala dialect. Accordingly, a number of similarities and dissimilarities between the past tense in the two languages are identified. Further, it has been discovered that these dissimilarities create difficulties for second language learners.Item Present Tense in Jaffna Tamil and Sinhala: A Contrastive Study(University of Kelaniya, 2015) Senthuran, S.While Tamil and Sinhala are the major linguistic groups in SriLanka society, they belong to the Dravidian and Indo-Aryan language families respectively. Contrastive studies in linguistics, particularly in the areas of morphology and syntax in grammatical studies, are of importance. While morphology consists of both noun and verb morphology, the latter is the focus of this study. Verb morphology expresses the internal structure of the verbs, with tenses playing a main role. Although tenses express the time distinctions in all languages through verb forms, the structures of verbs differ from language to language. Morphologically there are three different tenses in Jaffna Tamil, the present tense, the past tense, and the future tense. The perfect tense and progressive forms are mostly found in Literary Tamil. Jaffna spoken Tamil does not have a one to one correlation with different tenses. The present tense is often used instead of the future tense in spoken Tamil. In spoken Sinhala there are two main tenses, the past and the non-past. The non-past tense includes present and future tenses. There are also perfect, progressive, past and present emphatic forms. The Tamil data represent the researcher’s own dialect, the Jaffna spoken Tamil, and the Sinhala data represent standard Spoken Sinhala. The main objective of this paper is to highlight the similarities and the dissimilarities of the past tense in the spoken form of these two languages. This study employs contrastive and descriptive methodology.