A Study on the Most Productive Morphological Processes in Sri Lankan English Fiction

Abstract

Among the morphological processes used by the English language speakers, Sri Lankan English users tend to use certain processes more frequently compared to other processes in speech and writing. These morphological processes utilized by most of the Sri Lankans are characterized by the influence of the two languages Sinhala and Tamil. Therefore, to find out the most productive morphological processes used by the Sri Lankan English users whose native tongue is Sinhala and/or Tamil, scrutinizing the appearance of morphological processes in fiction written in Sri Lankan English is one way. Since the distinctive features of Sri Lankan English morphology lie in the expressive terminology, borrowed mainly from Sinhala and Tamil, this study analyzes fiction penned by writers of both Sinhala and Tamil origins. The two texts used in this study are, the novel, “Funny Boy” by Shyam Selvadurai and the short story “Action and Reaction” by Chitra Fernando written in Sri Lankan English. Therefore, the main aims and objectives of the research study are to identify and raise awareness of the most widely used and most productive morphological processes among the morphological processes found within Sri Lankan English by scrutinizing the aforementioned Sri Lankan English fiction. Since adequate research has not been conducted regarding the research focus, this study sheds light on what the most productive morphological processes are and how they contribute towards raising the level of creativity and expressiveness of language. Through the data collected by the textual analysis of the selected fiction and findings evaluated statistically, this quantitative study concludes that borrowing and compounding are the two most productive morphological processes used in Sri Lankan English fiction and these two morphological processes contribute best towards adjusting the meaning of a word or a sentence to fit its syntactic and communicational context enhancing the creativity, expressiveness and nativity.