A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS ON PHONETICS: A STUDY OF SOUTHERN AND WESTERN SINHALA DIALECTS IN THE SRI LANKAN CONTEXT

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.