In both written and spoken forms, the Sinhalese language allows all six possible word orders for active sentences with transitive verbs (i.e., SOV, OSV, SVO, OVS, VSO, and VOS), even though its unmarked order is subject-object-verb (SOV) (e.g., Gair, 1998; Miyagishi, 2003; Yamamoto, 2003). Reaction times for sentence correctness decisions showed SOV < SVO = OVS = OSV = VSO = VOS for the written form, and SOV < SVO = OVS < OSV = VSO = VOS for the spoken form. The different degrees of reaction times may correspond to the three different types of word order alternation. First, the fastest reaction time for SOV word order corresponds to the canonical order SOV without any structural change, represented as [_TP S [_VP O V] ] for both the written and spoken forms. Second, word order alternation at the same structural level is involved in both SVO and OVS, [_TP S [_VP t₁ V O₁] ] for SVO and [_TP t₁ [_VP O V ] S₁ ] for OVS, resulting in a slower reaction speed than SOV. Third, and again for only the spoken form, word order alternation takes place at a different structural level, [_TP’ O₁ [_TP S [_VP t₁ V ] ] ] for OSV, [_TP’ V₁ [_TP S [_VP O t₁] ] ] for VSO, and double word order alternations take place within the same level as [_TP t₁ [_VP t₂ V O₂ ] S₁] for VOS. These word order alternations for OSV, VSO and VOS require an extra cognitive load for sentence processing, even heavier than for a single word order alternation of SVO and OVS taking place at the same structural level. The present study thus provided evidence that the speed of sentence processing can be predicted from the cognitive load involved in word order alternation in a configurational phrase structure

Abstract-This article examined the use of English lexicons (i.e., loan words) in the contexts of Japanese language and Sinhala language. Japanese language and Sinhala language are said to be identical in many linguistic aspects. Moreover, with the development of English language education, both languages have successfully adopted many lexicons from English into their own contexts. A comparison was conducted on Japanese and Sinhala languages with relation to the use of English loan words. This study, first, examined the transitional system in Japanese context (alias Japglish), and the substitution system in Sinhala language (alias Singlish). Then, the two systems are compared to seek whether, the processes of adaptation, and the nature of use, show any typological facts that linguistically binds both languages. The review showed that in Japanese language, the transition system allows to use four types of English loan words. In Sinhala language on the other hand, there are three types of English loan words that are being used by the substitution system. A further analysis showed that both systems possess unique aspects, though not identical conversely. Overall, this study concludes that, Japglish and Singlish demonstrate typologically incongruence in the process of adaptation and the nature of use.

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Abstract-Previous studies suggest that, adverbs can have comparatively free positioning to that of other parts of speech in English language. This study focused on frequency adverbs which represent number of occurrences of an action or a condition. Since different positioning may produce relatively different meaning (or focus) of given sentences, processing of such sentences is assumed to be complex especially for L2 learners. Therefore, this study investigated how L2 learners process English sentences consisting of adverbs in different positions. The main goal of this study is to reveal which information-structure is mostly identified among Japanese EFL learners. A sentence-correctness-decision task was conducted with a group of 30 students. Stimuli were selected via a free-production written task. The data were analyzed using SPSS statistics with repeated measures (i.e., ANOVAs). A simple comparison between alternative ordering showed that, the sentences consisting of adverbs in between-positioning were processed faster to that of initial-positioning, assumable due to the different information flow. Thus, according to this study, English sentences consisting of frequency adverbs with the between-positioning [S (A (VO))] is likely to possess a high acceptability among Japanese EFL learners to that of initial-positioning sentences [A (S (VO))].