Everything about Substratum totally explained
In
contact linguistics, a
substratum (
lat. sub:
under +
stratum:
layer →
lower layer) is a
language that influences another one while that second, intrusive, language supplants it. Similarly, a
superstratum is an intrusive language that exerts influence on another language. An
adstratum refers to a language that's in contact with another language in a neighbour population without either identifiably having 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 (the local language persists and the intrusive language disappears) or the substratum (the local language disappears and the intrusive language persists) case 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. (for example the intrusion qualifies as an
invasion or
colonisation, an example would be the
Roman Empire giving raise 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 favour of Romance). The boundary case where neither language quite succeeds in displacing the other results in a
Creole.
Substratum
The term is also used of substrate interference, for example the influence exerted by the substratum language 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 mutual borrowing between languages of roughly equal prestige and no language replacement, and
superstratum, which refers to the influence a socially dominating language has on another, receding language which might be eventually 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). Then language B begins to supplant language A: the speakers of language A abandon their own language in favour of B, generally because they believe that it's in their best (for example 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. A
Celtic people, the
Gauls, 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 ninety) as well as place-names of Gaulish origin.
Another example is the influence of the
North Germanic Norn language, extinct since the 18th century, or the
Scots dialects of the
Shetland and
Orkney Islands.
Linguistic substrata may be difficult to detect, especially if the substratum 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; see
Germanic substrate hypothesis.
Creole languages typically have multiple substrata, rarely homogeneous ones.
The term was coined by Walter von Wartburg.
Indo-European
Substrata in
Indo-European languages:
Superstratum
In
linguistics, a
superstratum or
superstrate 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.
The term
adstratum 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,
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.
Adstratum
The term
adstratum 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.
Notable examples
Current result language – Substratum (Superstratum)
Further Information
Get more info on 'Substratum'.
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