Sinhala and Tamil : a case of contact-induced restructuring

PhD ThesisThe dissertation presents a comparative synchronic study of the morphosyntactic features of modern spoken Sinhala and Tamil, the two main languages of Sri Lanka. The main motivation of the research is that Sinhala and Tamil, two languages of diverse origins—the New Indo-Aryan (NIA) and Dravidian families respectively—share a wide spectrum of morphosyntactic features. Sinhala has long been isolated from the other NIA languages and co-existed with Tamil in Sri Lanka ever since both reached Sri Lanka from India. This coexistence, it is believed, led to what is known as the contact-induced restructuring that Sinhala morphosyntax has undergone on the model of Tamil, while retaining its NIA lexicon. Moreover, as languages of South Asia, the two languages share the areal features of this region. The research seeks to address the following questions: (i) What features do the two languages share and what features do they not share?; (ii) Are the features that they share areal features of the region or those diffused into one another owing to contact?; (iii) If the features that they share are due to contact, has diffusion taken place unidirectionally or bidirectionally?; and (iv) Does contact have any role to play with respect to features that they do not share? The claim that this research intends to substantiate is that Sinhala has undergone morphosyntactic restructuring on the model of Tamil. The research, therefore, attempts to answer another question: (v) Can the morphosyntactic restructuring that Sinhala has undergone be explained in syntactic terms? The morphosyntactic features of the two languages are analyzed at macro- and micro-levels. At the macro-level, a wide range of morphosyntactic features of Tamil and Sinhala, and those of seven other languages of the region are compared with a view to determining the origins of these features and showing the large scale morphosyntactic convergence between Sinhala and Tamil and the divergence between Sinhala and other NIA languages. At the micro-level the dissertation analyzes in detail two morphosyntactic phenomena, namely null arguments and focus constructions. It examines whether subject/verb agreement, which is different across the two languages, plays a role in the licensing of null arguments in each language. It also examines the nature of the changes Sinhala morphosyntax has undergone because of the two kinds of Tamil focus constructions that Sinhala has replicated. It is hoped, that this dissertation will make a significant contribution to the knowledge and understanding of the morphosyntax of the two languages, the effects of language contact on morphosyntax, and more generally, the nature of linguistic variation.Scholarship Programme of the Higher Education for the Twenty First Century (HETC) Project, Ministry of Higher Education, Sri Lanka

Retroflexion and retraction revised

Arguing against Bhat’s (1974) claim that retroflexion cannot be correlated with retraction, the present article illustrates that retroflexes are always retracted, though retraction is not claimed to be a sufficient criterion for retroflexion. The cooccurrence of retraction with retroflexion is shown to make two further implications; first, that non-velarized retroflexes do not exist, and second, that secondary palatalization of retroflexes is phonetically impossible. The process of palatalization is shown to trigger a change in the primary place of articulation to non-retroflex. Phonologically, retraction has to be represented by the feature specification [+back] for all retroflex segments

Retroflexion and retraction revised

Arguing against Bhat’s (1974) claim that retroflexion cannot be correlated with retraction, the present article illustrates that retroflexes are always retracted, though retraction is not claimed to be a sufficient criterion for retroflexion. The cooccurrence of retraction with retroflexion is shown to make two further implications; first, that non-velarized retroflexes do not exist, and second, that secondary palatalization of retroflexes is phonetically impossible. The process of palatalization is shown to trigger a change in the primary place of articulation to non-retroflex. Phonologically, retraction has to be represented by the feature specification [+back] for all retroflex segments

The phonology of verbal forms in colloquial Ceylon Tamil

This thesis describes the phonology of the verbal forms in colloquial Ceylon Tamil, for the first time within the framework of generative phonology.It consists of an introduction, seven chapters, two appendices and a bibliography.The introduction includes a brief outline of the main features of Ceylon colloquial Tamil, a criticism of the previous work done in Ceylon Tamil, a brief note on the data that is taken up for investigation, and a discussion of the merits of generative phonology.In Chapter 1, the model that has been proposed to describe the phonology of the verbal forms in colloquial Ceylon Tamil is taken up for discussion. The present model differs from that of Chomsky and Halle (1968) in a number of respects.Chapter 2 provides the forms that have to be accounted for by the rules of the phonology. The constituent structure of a verb form, classification of verbal stems, the grammatical formatives, namely, the suffixes and the tense markers, the derivation of the verbal bases and the nominals and the formation of a complex verb are discussed in detail. All the phonological matrix insertion rules (PMIR) are found in this chapter.Chapter 3 deals with the positive conditions and the traffic rules. The redundancy rules and the phonological rules are dealt with in Chapters 4 and 5 respectively.In Chapter 6, the output of the phonological component (i.e. the systematic phonetic representation) is informally related to articulatory terms of traditional phonetic description. While discussing the phonetic quality of each phoneticc segment, reference has been made to palatographic and kymographic evidence.Chapter 7 provides a summary of the rules of the phonology and a few examples to test the validity of these rules. Each example begins with its underlying surface syntactic form and ends with its systematic phonetic representation. The derivation of the latter from the former is illustrated step by step.Appendix I lists the verbal stems accounted for in the description. Appendix II lists the grammatical. formatives. These two are informally regarded as lexicon 1 and lexicon 2 respectively

Morphologic, Syntactic, and Phonologic Distance Between Japanese and Altaic, Dravidian, Austronesian, and Korean Languages

The present study measures the resemblances of Japanese with Altaic languages (Turkic; Tungstic; Mongolic; Nivkh); the Dravidian language Tamil; Austronesian languages (Western Malayo-Polynesian; Malayo-Sumbawan; Central Luzon; Central Malayo-Polynesian), and Korean, in an effort to pin down the genealogy of Japanese. Morphologic, syntactic, and phonologic distance are calculated using data from corpora. The chi-square homogeneity test and Euclidean distances are used for statistical analysis. The finding brings to light, morphologically, in the light of preferences of causative/inchoative verb alternation patterning and morphemes that convey the alternation, that Japanese and Korean are close for the most part. Syntactically, Altaics and Tamil convey case via suffixes; case in Austronesian languages is marked by prefixes. Japanese and Korean share a similarity in rendering case with particles. Phonologically, the Tamil and Austronesian languages share a resemblance in the harmony of vowel height. The Korean, Altaic languages, and Austronesian languages show similarities in the harmony of vowel backness. Japanese, the Altaic languages, and the Austronesian language Madurese display vowel-consonant harmony. Pulling these strands together, a conclusion is thus drawn that Japanese is most closely related to Korean

Linguistic Ambiguity in Language-based Jokes

The purpose of this study was to (1) identify patterns in joke type, word class, word class progressions, use of morphologic/syllabic mechanisms, and compound word manipulations in the “serious” and “humorous” interpretations of puns, (2) compare results with two previous studies (Attardo et al. 1994b and Bucaria 2004) and delineate discrepancies, and (3) to explore how language pattern(s) in English puns contribute to our theoretical understanding of linguistic interpretation. From a collection of 6,000 puns published online, 225 were randomly chosen and analyzed for alliterative, phonological, lexical, and syntactic categorizations, as well as for patterns in word class, word class progressions, use of morphologic/syllabic mechanisms, and compound word manipulations. Results indicate a high use of syllabic and morphologic mechanisms in the formation of language-based jokes…a phenomenon which has previously been unexplored. It also found a proportionally low use of adverbs despite their standing as open class words. Finally, this study found a consistent trend across all linguistic levels for holistic processing. New standards for marginal joke type categorizations are proposed based on syllabic and morphological characteristics. In addition, lack of adverbial use is attributed to proximity, transitivity, similarity, and mobility of this particular word class. Discrepancies between authors\u27 results are attributed to genre, joke elimination, and differing standards for categorization. Finally, holistic processing is discussed from the theoretical perspective of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The Bilingual Lemma Activation Model as a Comparative Approach to Codeswitching

This paper explores intrasentential Codeswitching (CS) as a commonly observed bilingual speech behavior. Different from surface-based models, it investigates CS at an abstract level by relating the nature and activity of the bilingual mental lexicon in bilingual speech production to the structural principles governing CS. The Matrix Language Frame (MLF) Model is adopted for describing some fundamental structural principles governing CS, and the Bilingual Lemma Activation Model (BLA) is proposed for explaining the linguistic motivations for CS. Based on the analysis of some naturally occurring CS instances involving various language pairs, this study supports the claim that one of the bilingual’s languages is activated as the Matrix Language (ML) and the other as the Embedded Language (EL), and content and system morphemes are unequally activated. It is the ML which provides the sentential frame for CS and the EL only provides content morphemes switched into this frame. It further argues that bilingual mental lexicon contains not only lexemes but also more abstract elements called “lemmas”, and lemmas in the bilingual mental lexicon are language-specific and such lemmas are in contact in CS. This study provides evidence that only conceptually activated EL lemmas can be switched into the ML sentential frame