Abstract:
This Qualitative Meta- Analysis explores the phonetic aspects of the Southern
Sinhala Dialects and the Western Sinhala Dialects within the Sri Lankan
context. This study gathers and incorporates the existing literature in order to
provide a comprehensive outline on the linguistic variation, articulatory
gestures, and phonological representation that distinguish these two Sinhala
dialects. This study involves the phonetic distinctions found within the
Southern Sinhala Dialect and the Western Sinhala Dialect, clarifying their
distinctive features and providing a base for the future research investigations.
It explores into the unique phonological features including the Vowel and
consonant variations, Articulatory aspects including the Manner of
articulation, Place of articulation and the Prosodic characteristics including the
intonation and stress in the two different dialects with the exploration on the
previously done literature. With the analysis of the existing scholarly works
that explored the Southern and Western dialect variations, it was identified
that the changes in the vowel systems, the variations in consonant articulation,
the stress patterns used in the dialects and the utilization of intonation in
expressing results in the variations in the two dialects. This study facilitates a
deeper understanding of the phonetic differences between Southern and
Western Sinhala Dialects while facilitating new insights for future studies on
phonetic variations and filling the gaps of the previous researches in Sri Lanka.
By exploring these details, this study enhances the knowledge on linguistics
and the linguistic diversity in Sri Lanka.
