ABSTRACT
The current linguistic situation is characterised by diglossia. The literary variety of Sinhala is used in all forms of writing, is formally taught at school and maintained as a distinct code alongside the spoken language. It has a complex morphological structure, the nominal and verbal inflections being comparable to those of Sanskrit; thus the noun retains a number of case suffixes and postpositions which have been lost from the spoken variety, the verb inflects for person and number, and its active and passive forms continue inherited patterns. The spoken language on the other hand is characterised by a more simplified morphological structure, the nominal declension having lost some of the case forms and the conjugation of the verb having lost the categories of person and number and with them agreement with the subject. These and other changes form, in fact, part of a more general restructuring that has affected the syntax of the verb. In what follows we shall concern ourselves exclusively with the spoken language and shall not make any comparisons with the literary variety.
