Stratum (linguistics)

This article is about the linguistic use of the term, for other uses see Stratum (disambiguation) and wiktionary:superstrate

In linguistics, a stratum or strate (Latin: layer) is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which has lower power or status than another, while a superstratum is the language that has higher power or status. Both substratum and superstratum languages influence each other, but in different ways. An adstratum refers to a language that is in contact with another language in a neighbor population without having identifiably higher or lower prestige.

Thus, both terms refer to a situation where an intrusive language establishes itself in the territory of another, typically as the result of migration. Whether the superstratum case (the local language persists and the intrusive language disappears) or the substratum one (the local language disappears and the intrusive language persists) applies will normally only be evident after several generations, during which the intrusive language exists within a diaspora culture. In order for the intrusive language to persist (substratum case), the immigrant population will either need to take the position of a political elite or immigrate in significant numbers relative to the local population. (i.e. the intrusion qualifies as an invasion or colonisation, an example would be the Roman Empire giving rise to Romance languages outside of Italy, displacing Gaulish).

The superstratum case refers to elite populations which eventually adopt the local language (an example would be the Burgundians and Franks in France, who eventually abandoned their Germanic dialects in favor of Romance).

Substratum

A substratum or substrate (plural: substrata or substrates) is a language that influences an intrusive language that supplants it. The term is also used of substrate interference, i.e. the influence the substratum language exerts on the supplanting language. According to some classifications, this is one of three main types of linguistic interference: substratum interference differs from both adstratum, which involves no language replacement but rather mutual borrowing between languages of roughly equal prestige, and superstratum, which refers to the influence a socially dominating language has on another, receding language that might eventually be relegated to the status of a substratum language.

In a typical case of substrate interference, a language A occupies a given territory and another language B arrives in the same territory (brought, for example, with migrations of population). Language B then begins to supplant language A: the speakers of language A abandon their own language in favour of B, generally because they believe that it is in their best (e.g. economic, political, cultural, social) interests to do so. During the language shift, however, the receding language A still influences language B (for example, through the transfer of loanwords, place names, or grammatical patterns from A to B).

For example, Gaulish is a substratum of French. The Gauls, a Celtic people, lived in the current French-speaking territory before the arrival of the Romans. Given the cultural, economic and political prestige which Latin enjoyed, the Gauls eventually abandoned their language in favor of Latin, which evolved in this region until eventually it took the form of Modern French. The Gaulish speech disappeared, but it remains detectable in some French words (approximately 150) as well as place-names of Gaulish origin.

Another example is the influence of the now extinct North Germanic Norn language on the Scots dialects of the Shetland and Orkney islands.

Linguistic substrata may be difficult to detect, especially if the substrate language and its nearest relatives are extinct. For example, the earliest form of the Germanic languages may have been influenced by a non-Indo-European language, purportedly the source of about one quarter of the most ancient Germanic word-stock. There are similar arguments for a Sanskrit substrate, and a Greek one.

Typically, Creole languages have multiple substrata, with the actual influence of such languages being indeterminate.

Superstratum

A superstratum or superstrate (plural: superstrata or superstrates) is the counterpart to a substratum. When one language succeeds another, the former is termed the superstratum and the latter the substratum. In the case of French, for example, Vulgar Latin is the superstrate and Gaulic the substrate.

A superstrate may also represent an imposed linguistic element akin to what occurred with English and Norman after after the Norman Conquest of 1066 and English language usage carried low prestige. The international scientific vocabulary coinages from Greek and Latin roots adopted by European languages (and subsequently by other languages) to describe scientific topics (anatomy, medicine, botany, zoology, all the '-ology' words, etc.) can also be termed a superstratum, although for this last case, "adstratum" might be a better designation (despite the prestige of science and of its language).

Several theories infer an Altaic superstratum in the phylogenetic make-up of the languages of East Asia. For instance, a prevailing view among linguists contends that Japanese consists of a Altaic superstratum projected onto an Austronesian substratum. Similarly, the Chinese language of Northern China is alleged to have undergone Altaicization to different degrees.

Adstratum

An adstratum or adstrate (plural: adstrata or adstrates) refers to a language which is equal in prestige to another. Generally the term is used only when speaking about languages in a particular country or geopolitical region. For example, early in England's history, Old English and Norse had an adstratal relationship.

The phenomenon is relatively rare today, since modern nations generally have only one dominant language (often corresponding to the dialect of the capital). In India, where dozens of languages are widespread, many could be said to share an adstratal relationship, although Hindi is certainly dominant in North India. A more accurate example would be the situation in Belgium, where the French and Dutch languages have roughly the same status, and could justifiably be called adstrates.

The term is also used to identify systematic influences or a layer of borrowings in a given language from another language where the two languages coexist as separate entities. Many modern languages have an appreciable adstratum from English. The Neo-Latin and Neo-Greek coinages adopted by European languages (and now, languages worldwide) to describe scientific topics (anatomy, medicine, botany, zoology, all the '-ology' words, etc.) can also justifiably be called adstrata. Another example is found in the Spanish and Portuguese languages, which contain a heavy Semitic (particularly Arabic) adstratum.

Notable examples of substrate inference

Area	Resultant language	Substrate / original language	Superstrate	Superstrate introduced by
Lappland	Sami languages	Local Old European languages	Early Proto-Finnic
England	Middle English	Old English	Old French	Normans during the Norman conquest. (Note: This is a hypothesis)
Ireland	Irish English	Irish language	Early Modern English	the English during the Plantations of Ireland in the 16th century
Spain	Spanish	Paleohispanic languages	Vulgar Latin	Romans during the Roman Empire
France	French	Gaulish	Vulgar Latin, later Frankish
Singapore	Singaporean Mandarin	Southern Chinese dialects: Min Nan, Cantonese	Standard Mandarin	Romans during the Speak Mandarin Campaign
Mexico	Mexican Spanish	Nahuatl and Mayan languages	Spanish of the 15th century		Spaniards during the Spanish Conquest of the 15th century
Chile	Chilean Spanish	Mapudungun, Quechua and Aymara languages
Paraguay	Paraguayan Spanish	Guaraní language
Peru	Peruvian Spanish	Quechua language
Argentina	Argentine Spanish	Italian language, French language, Lebanese Arabic, Syrian Arabic, Quechua language and Guaraní language
Jamaica	Jamaican English	African languages of transported African slaves	Early Modern English	the English during the British Empire
India	Indian English	various language substrates from Indian languages, especially Hindi	Modern English
Israel	Standard Modern Israeli (non-Oriental) Hebrew	principally the Yiddish language, and various other European languages of European Jewish immigrants to Israel, also Judeo-Arabic	Biblical Hebrew	European Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who revived then re-introduced Hebrew
Austria	Austrian German	Austro-Bavarian	Standard German	Empress Maria Theresa upon adoption of Gottsched's Standard German in the late 18th century
Switzerland	Swiss Standard German	Alemannic		Adoption of Standard German by the reforms of the Zürich Bible in 1665 and 1755

See also

• Language shift
• Language transfer
• Trans-cultural diffusion
• Pre-Greek substrate
• Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni
• Substrate in Vedic Sanskrit
• Germanic substrate hypothesis
• Graziadio Isaia Ascoli

References

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