Symposia & Conferences
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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 Developing a Dependency Tag Set for Sinhala: Procedure and Issues.(The Third International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka, ICLSL 2017. Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka., 2017) Liyanage, C.; Wijeratne, W.M.Dependency Grammar (DG) is considered as one of the prominent theories of syntax. In order to analyze a particular language on DG and to make an annotated Dependency Treebank, a Tag set is needed. The objective of this research is to compile a Dependency Treebank for Sinhala. As part of compiling, the Treebank a Tagset was developed. This study is designed to explore the procedure and issues of developing a dependency tagset, with special focus to Sinhala Language. Methodology of the study includes 1. Identify same grammatical categories from benchmark tagsets 2. Find out syntactico-semantic categories from traditional Sinhala grammar books 3. Analyze sentences extracted from UCSC Sinhala corpus and further identify grammatical categories 4. Verify the tagset. In literature no reported work has been done based on DG for Sinhala. However, syntactic analysis on other grammatical traditions, Sinhala grammar books and several tagsets were referred in this work. Among the referred tag sets, Stanford typed dependencies manual (Marneffe and Manning, 2016) and AnnCorra: TreeBanks for Indian Languages-Guidelines for Annotating Hindi TreeBank (Bharati et al, 2012) were selected as benchmark tagsets. To ensure uniformity of the tagsets many tags for the same grammatical categories were taken from the above benchmark tag schemas. Findings of the research introduce syntactico-semantic categories and levels of dependency relations of words in Sinhala. The tagset comprises 42 tags and can be used in related works on DG for Sinhala.Item Word Formation in Tamil Baby Talk(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Wijeratne, W.M.This research is aimed at discovering the nature of the words used by Tamil children at the early stage of their language acquisition. Language is acquired by humans during the early part of their life. While acquiring a language they also try to communicate with people around them using either signs or words. These words may not be the same as the words used by adults in the language concerned. The adults who participate in conversation with children also imitate these words or use words specific to child language. Thus the words used in baby talks are somewhat different from those in the adult talk. The children in Tamil community are not an exception in this regard. In Tamil baby talks, children also employ specific words. They are called "koiy" and show different word formation patterns. Therefore, it is useful to study the nature of the formation of these words. Data was collected from different parts of Sri Lanka with the help of mothers and caretakers of children. The sample consists of children who belong to the age group year one to year four. Data was also collected through direct observation and participation. Collected data was analysed structurally on the basis of the structural linguistic method. The research indicates that words in baby talks are formed using several processes such as deletion, shortening, assimilation and substitution.Item The Logical Relationship between the Writing Errors and the Acquisition Order of the English Grammatical Morphemes(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Jeyaseelan, S.; Wijeratne, W.M.The study of the acquisition of the grammatical morphemes seems to be a key concern of this study in terms of the order of acquisition. Acquisition order is very much inter-related with the process of second language learning and acquisition. The grammatical morpheme like third person singular –„s‟ is acquired later than the other morphemes such as the plural-„s‟ and the past tense –„ed‟. The research problem is however, the teachers deal with the learners making errors in such morphemes repetitively. The objective is to investigate the logical relationship between the acquisition order and the errors. The first year students of the Faculty of Business Studies of Vavuniya Campus were selected as the sample. The convenient sampling method was used. The data were collected by conducting tests based on the nine grammatical morphemes. The findings reveal that the use of some morphemes the copula-„be‟, the auxiliary-„be‟, the possessive –„s‟, and the irregular past are used less than the plural –„s‟, the past tense –„ed‟, and the progressive –„ing‟. The reasons for less or no errors in the use of the morphemes can be attributed to the non-attempt nature and a strategy of the respondents to avoid using any forms difficult to be used correctly. There is a logical relationship between the findings of the ranking order of the morphemes based on the results of the closed test and the findings of their use in the creative writing assignment. The morphemes of the lower ranks in the closed-test are used less or not used at all in the creative writing.Item Error Analysis: An Investigation of the Writing of English as a Second Language(University of Kelaniya, 2015) Wijeratne, W.M.; Jeyaseelan, S.Errors are significant in the teaching and learning process of English as Second Language learners. Error analysis is a useful practice in second language learning because it reveals the problematic areas to teachers, syllabus designers and text book writers. Therefore, it is mandatory for teachers to summarize these frequently appearing errors, and stress to students of these errors as often as possible so that they can make greater effort to avoid them and improve their writing. The purpose of this study was to investigate the errors committed in using the articles, the past tense and the irregular past tense made by Vavuniya Campus first year English as Second Language learners in their English writings. For this study seventy-two students were taken as a sample and the same number of scripts were collected as a data and analyzed. Based on the Corder’s error analysis method the data was analyzed qualitatively. The findings reveal these errors are mainly caused by over-generalization. Intralingual errors occur due to the difficulty and irregular nature of the English language. Further, the failure to learn, understand the concept and use grammatical elements highlights the excessive use of the articles and irregular past tense in their writing. This study reveals that the performance of the Sri Lankan university students in the use of the rules of grammatical morphemes in concrete entities and events are yet to be improved. This poses a serious problem in using the grammatical morphemes with abstract entities and events of management discipline with sophisticated linguistic and theoretical expressions at the tertiary level. To be sustainable, this recommendation has to be implemented at the school level as well.Item Current Trends in Linguistic Research in Sri Lanka(University of Kelaniya, 2015) Wijeratne, W.M.; Gamage, K.N.The purpose of this study is to investigate the current trends in linguistic research in Sri Lanka. Linguistics is studied as a major subject in the Universities of Kelaniya and Jaffna. The former maitains undergraduate and a post graduate programmes in linguistics; Research is done for post graduate degrees such as M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D. Annually small scale research studies are done by about hundred M.A. students as a partial requirement of their study programme. Further, the number of researchers studying for their M.Phil. degree also has increased. As a result, research findings are presented in dissertation form and the university has got several hundreds of linguistic research dissertations. Yet, there has not been any formal study to find out the nature of these pieces of research and thus it would be very useful to find out the nature of them. Thus, the research problem in this study is ‘what is the nature of linguistic researches done during the last seven years in the University of Kelaniya?’ In order to answer this question details of researches done during the last seven years have been gathered from M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. Dissertations and classified into different subfields of linguistics. The present research is limited to research carried out from 2007 to 2014 in University of Kelaniya. The results indicate that research in the applied linguistic field are frequently done, yet there is an interest of the other theoretical and practical aspects of linguistics.Item First Language acquisition: A case study(University of Kelaniya, 2015) Wijeratne, W.M.The present study is a case study which aims at looking for the gradual development of language acquisition of a child from the six month to three years. Language acquisition is an innate ability based on which human infants acquire a language that they are exposed to. Language acquisition is a gradual process, the speed of which depends on various factors. The objective of the study is to find out the nature of language acquisition of the subject and its relevance to the accepted norms of language acquisition. The data were collected through participatory observation and it is a random sampling. The data were transcribed and analysed structurally. The paper describes how the subject acquires the first language. The findings are compared with Wickramasinghe (1999) and Wijekoon (2011). It shows that though the language acquisition process is similar to those described in previous studies, the speed of acquisition is different. This may be due to other external factors. This study is significant not only to theoretical linguists but also to language therapists and other researchers who are interested in looking for normalcy in language acquisition. A limitation in this study is that the data were not electronically recorded and hence they cannot be rechecked.