Sinhalese language(one of the national languages spoken in Sri Lanka)and culture have a long and continuous history,ingrained traditions,and highly differentiated social norms.The Sinhalese Buddhist community of Sri L...Sinhalese language(one of the national languages spoken in Sri Lanka)and culture have a long and continuous history,ingrained traditions,and highly differentiated social norms.The Sinhalese Buddhist community of Sri Lanka is broadly categorized into two groups,secular/layman(ɡṛhasthə>ɡihi)and mendicant/clergy(prəvrajitə>pævidi).According to this situation,the Sinhalese language depicts very significant usages among Indo-Aryan languages.Buddhism is the main factor for this differentiation.This paper mainly focused on the religious terms and their usages in Sinhalese.These terms show the hierarchical structure of the common Sri Lankan society,especially among layman and clergy.Some characteristic features which have been taken into account in this research paper are as follows:(1)Layman and clergy usages of Sinhalese(Separate set of nouns and verbs which are used to represent the clergy and secular in Sinhalese);(2)The hierarchical structure of usages of imperative forms in the context of religious and secular(superior,equal,and inferior);(3)Formal-Power base vs.Informal-Solidarity relationship;(4)Usage of different morphemes with the same meaning(semantically same usages are identified here with the different morphemes).As a result of the usages of religious and secular forms in Sinhalese the different morphological realizations with similar semantic values can be identified.The collection of relevant data from modern Sinhalese usages and text books and the analysis of them are used as the research methodology of this paper.展开更多
文摘Sinhalese language(one of the national languages spoken in Sri Lanka)and culture have a long and continuous history,ingrained traditions,and highly differentiated social norms.The Sinhalese Buddhist community of Sri Lanka is broadly categorized into two groups,secular/layman(ɡṛhasthə>ɡihi)and mendicant/clergy(prəvrajitə>pævidi).According to this situation,the Sinhalese language depicts very significant usages among Indo-Aryan languages.Buddhism is the main factor for this differentiation.This paper mainly focused on the religious terms and their usages in Sinhalese.These terms show the hierarchical structure of the common Sri Lankan society,especially among layman and clergy.Some characteristic features which have been taken into account in this research paper are as follows:(1)Layman and clergy usages of Sinhalese(Separate set of nouns and verbs which are used to represent the clergy and secular in Sinhalese);(2)The hierarchical structure of usages of imperative forms in the context of religious and secular(superior,equal,and inferior);(3)Formal-Power base vs.Informal-Solidarity relationship;(4)Usage of different morphemes with the same meaning(semantically same usages are identified here with the different morphemes).As a result of the usages of religious and secular forms in Sinhalese the different morphological realizations with similar semantic values can be identified.The collection of relevant data from modern Sinhalese usages and text books and the analysis of them are used as the research methodology of this paper.
