are very similar to what is seen in other Creole languages like Melanesian Pidgin English and Jamaican English Creole. The preponderance of the palatal affricates is explained as a remainder from days when the original Vedda language had a high frequency of such phonemes. Morphology Formerly distinct Vedda nouns have two types of suffixes, one for animate and another for inanimate. Animate nouns The animate suffixes are for personal pronouns and for all other animate nouns and and for personified nouns. Examples are ('god') ('worm') ('I' or 'we') ('sun') ('fire') These suffixes are also used in singular and plural forms based on the verbal and non-verbal context. ('Sir, I killed the elephant though') ('When our great-grandmother was walking in the forest there was a child conceived in that one's womb.') The dependence on verbal (and non-verbal) context for semantic specification, which is accomplished by inflectional devices by natural languages is an indication of a contact language. Certain words that appear to be from original Vedda language do not have these suffixes; also, animate nouns also have gender distinctions, with small animals treated as feminine (i marker) and larger ones masculine (a marker). ('elephant') ('deer') ('bear') ('bear') ('buffalo') ('bee') ('monitor lizard') ('bee') ('spider') ('louse') Inanimate nouns Inanimate nouns use suffixes such as and with nouns denoting body parts and other suffixes such as , , and . Suffixes are used when the words are borrowed from Sinhalese. ('eye') ('throat') ('street') ('coconut') ('verse') ('fire') There are number of forms that are from the original Vedda language that lack suffixes such as ('axe') ('pot') ('bush') Vedda inanimate nouns are formed by borrowing Sinhalese adjectives and adding a suffix. is the Sinhalese adjective for the noun , whereas the Vedda noun is , where is a suffix. Pronouns Examples of pronouns are ('I'), ('you'), ('there'), ('where?'). Compared to Sinhalese, which requires five forms to address people based on status, Vedda uses one () irrespective of status. These pronouns are also used in both singular and plural denotations. Numerals These are found in definite and indefinite forms, for example 'one' (def.) and 'once' (indef.) They count , and . Vedda also reduces the number formations found in Sinhalese. Negation Another example of simplification in Vedda is the minimisation of negative meanings found in Sinhalese: Lexicon Many Vedda words are directly borrowed from Sinhalese or Tamil via Sinhalese while maintaining words that are not derivable from