Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to present a brief comparative and
contrastive analysis of the syntactic structure of the auxiliary verbs in Tamil
and Sinhala languages on a structural basis. It describes and pin-points the
areas of difficulty that the speakers of these two languages have in learning
each others’ languages. There are number of regional and social dialects
existing in both Tamil and Sinhala. However, the Tamil data represent the
author’s own dialect, the Jaffna Tamil which is a socio- regional sub-dialect
of Sri Lankan Tamil. The Sinhala data represent the Colombo dialect of
Sinhala. This study involves the methodology of comparative and contrastive
analysis of syntactic structure of auxiliary verbs in Tamil and Sinhala, in
order to establish the facts that there are similarities and dissimilarities in
the two languages. To our knowledge so far, no one has attempted to embark
on this selected topic. It is believed that this study of this kind would
facilitate the teachers’ task of preparing teaching materials and to identify
students’ difficulties in learning a second language. Further, it will reduce the
students’ burden of learning a second language. This research study can be a
source for implementing trilingualism at the university level. Furthermore,
this study will encourage other scholars to undertake more research work in
this field, so as to contribute to human knowledge and communal harmony.
