Morphological Processes of Sri Lankan English in Four Sri Lankan Short Stories

Abstract

One of the main devices used to express different feelings and concepts of the users of a new variety of a language is new vocabulary. Sri Lankan English which is identified as a distinct variety of English has a rich vocabulary which resulted from English coming into contact with other languages in Sri Lanka. Literature of a language has always played a significant role in developing and expanding its vocabulary. The production of short stories in English has rendered people in Sri Lanka to represent their ethnic and cultural diversification through literature, and hence their literary works reflect the uniqueness of Sri Lankan English. Sri Lankan English vocabulary has been enriched by the continuous addition of new words formed through a number of morphological processes. The aim of this study is to examine the contribution of the production of Sri Lankan short stories to expand the Sri Lankan English vocabulary. Furthermore, this study investigates the use of different morphological processes of Sri Lankan English used in four Sri Lankan short stories written by authors belonging to the four main ethnic groups in Sri Lanka. The study will reveal morphological processes such as borrowing, compounding, semantic creations, loan translations in addition to other identified morphological processes. The results of the study further reveal that the selected Sri Lankan short story writers of English have employed borrowing as a productive morphological process along with other creative strategies of generating new words in their short stories.