In
linguistics, a
stratum or
strate () is a
language that influences, or is influenced by another through
contact. A substratum is a language which is influenced by another, while a superstratum is the language that exerts the influence. An adstratum refers to a language that is in contact with another language in a neighbour 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 another one while that second, intrusive, language 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 favour 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 subtstrate, 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 is the substrate.
It is also used to describe an imposed linguistic element, akin to what
English underwent after 1066 with
Norman. 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 be termed a superstratum, although for this last,
adstratum would be a better choice.
Several theories infer an
Altaic superstratum in the
phylogenetic make-up of the languages of
South-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
See also
