Stratum (linguistics)

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Substrate language
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This article is about the term in linguistics. For other uses, see Stratum (disambiguation).

In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a historical layer of language that influences or is influenced by another language through contact. The notion of "strata" was first developed by the Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli (1829–1907), and became known in the English-speaking world through the work of two different authors in 1932.[1]

Thus, both concepts apply to a situation where an intrusive language establishes itself in the territory of another, typically as the result of

colonisation; an example would be the Roman Empire giving rise to Romance languages outside Italy, displacing Gaulish and many other Indo-European languages). The superstratum case refers to elite invading populations that eventually adopt the language of the native lower classes. An example would be the Burgundians and Franks
in France, who eventually abandoned their Germanic dialects in favor of other Indo-European languages of the Romance branch, profoundly influencing the local speech in the process.

Substratum

A substratum (plural: substrata) or substrate is a language that an intrusive language influences, which may or may not ultimately change it to become a new language. The term is also used of substrate interference; i.e. the influence the substratum language exerts on the replacing language. According to some classifications, this is one of three main types of

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 favor of the other language, generally because they believe that it will help them achieve certain goals within government, the workplace, and in social settings. During the language shift, however, the receding language A still influences language B (for example, through the transfer of

place names
, or grammatical patterns from A to B).

In most cases, the ability to identify substrate influence in a language requires knowledge of the structure of the substrate language. This can be acquired in numerous ways:[2]

  • The substrate language, or some later descendant of it, still survives in a part of its former range;
  • Written records of the substrate language may exist to various degrees;
  • The substrate language itself may be unknown entirely, but it may have surviving close relatives that can be used as a base of comparison.

One of the first-identified cases of substrate influence is an example of a substrate language of the second type:

Romans, namely the invasion of Julius Caesar's army. Given the cultural, economic and political advantages that came with being a Latin speaker, the Gauls eventually abandoned their language in favor of the language brought to them by the Romans, which evolved in this region until eventually it took the form of the French language that is known today. The Gaulish speech disappeared in the late Roman era, but remnants of its vocabulary survive in some French words (approximately 200) as well as place-names of Gaulish origin. It is also posited that some structural changes in French were shaped at least in part by Gaulish influence[3] including diachronic sound changes and sandhi phenomena due to the retention of Gaulish phonetic patterns after the adoption of Latin,[4][5][6] calques such as aveugle ("blind", literally without eyes, from Latin ab oculis, which was a calque on the Gaulish word exsops with the same semantic construction as modern French)[7] with other Celtic calques possibly including "oui", the word for yes,[8] while syntactic and morphological effects are also posited.[8][9][10]

Other examples of substrate languages are the influence of the now extinct

Himyaritic
substrata.

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

Unattested substrata

In the absence of all three lines of evidence mentioned above, linguistic substrata may be difficult to detect. Substantial indirect evidence is needed to infer the former existence of a substrate. The nonexistence of a substrate is difficult to show,[11] and to avoid digressing into speculation, burden of proof must lie on the side of the scholar claiming the influence of a substrate. The principle of uniformitarianism[12] and results from the study of human genetics suggest that many languages have formerly existed that have since then been replaced under expansive language families, such as Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Uralic or Bantu. However, it is not a given that such expansive languages would have acquired substratum influence from the languages they have replaced.

Several examples of this type of substratum have still been claimed. For example, the earliest form of the

Balto-Slavic (proposed by Georg Holzer).[11]
The name Temematic is an abbreviation of "tenuis, media, media aspirata, tenuis", referencing a sound shift presumed common to the group.

When a substrate language or its close relatives cannot be directly studied, their investigation is rooted in the study of

Ossetic.[14]

Concept history

Although the influence of the prior language when a community speaks (and adopts) a new one may have been informally acknowledged beforehand, the concept was formalized and popularized initially in the late 19th century. As historical phonology emerged as a discipline, the initial dominant viewpoint was that influences from

creole languages was used to counter Mueller's view in 1884, by Hugo Schuchardt
. In modern historical linguistics, debate persists on the details of how language contact may induce structural changes, but the respective extremes of "all change is contact" and "there are no structural changes ever" have largely been abandoned in favor of a set of conventions on how to demonstrate contact induced structural changes, which includes adequate knowledge of the two languages in question, a historical explanation, and evidence that the contact-induced phenomenon did not exist in the recipient language before contact, among other guidelines.

Superstratum

A superstratum (plural: superstrata) or superstrate offers the counterpart to a substratum. When a different language influences a base language to result in a new language, linguists label the influencing language a superstratum and the influenced language a substratum.

A superstrate may also represent an imposed linguistic element akin to what occurred with

Gaulish
the substrate.

Some linguists contend that

Austronesian substratum.[18] Some scholars also argue for the existence of Altaic superstrate influences on varieties of Chinese spoken in Northern China.[19] In this case, however, the superstratum refers to influence, not language succession. Other views detect substrate effects.[20]

Adstratum

An adstratum (plural: adstrata) or adstrate is a language that influences another language by virtue of geographic proximity, not by virtue of its relative prestige. For example, early in

Old Norse served as an adstrate, contributing to the lexical structure of Old English.[21]

The phenomenon is less common today in standardized linguistic varieties and more common in colloquial forms of speech since modern nations tend to favour one single linguistic variety (often corresponding to the

capital and other important regions) over others. In India, where dozens of languages are widespread, many languages could be said to share an adstratal relationship, but Hindi is certainly a dominant adstrate in North India. A different example would be the sociolinguistic situation in Belgium, where the French and Dutch
languages have roughly the same status, and could justifiably be called adstrates to each other having each one provided a large set of lexical specifications to the other.

The term adstratum is also used to identify systematic influences or a layer of borrowings in a given language from another language independently of whether the two languages continue coexisting as separate entities. Many modern languages have an appreciable adstratum from English due to the cultural influence and economic preponderance of the United States on international markets and previously colonization by the

Holocaust
.

Notable examples of possible substrate or superstrate influence

Substrate influence on superstrate

Area Resultant language Substrate Superstrate Superstrate introduced by
China (Baiyue), Northern Vietnam Yue (Viet), Min, Au, Wu Various Old Yue languages Old Chinese Sinicisation (
Qin's campaign against the Yue tribes, Han campaigns against Minyue, and Southward expansion of the Han dynasty
), between the first millennium BC and the first millennium AD
Levant Levantine Arabic Western Aramaic Pre-classical Arabic Arabs during the Muslim conquests
Egypt Egyptian Arabic Coptic
Mesopotamia Mesopotamian Arabic Eastern Aramaic
Maghreb (North Africa) Algerian, Libyan, Moroccan, and Tunisian Arabic Berber languages, Punic language, and Vulgar Latin
Ethiopia Amharic
Central Cushitic languages
 South Semitic languages Bronze Age Semitic expansion
Eritrea/Ethiopia
Ge'ez
North Cushitic languages
England Old English Common Brittonic and British Latin Ingvaeonic languages Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain
Cornwall Cornish English Cornish Early Modern English Anglicisation of Cornish people
Ireland Irish English Irish the English during the Plantations of Ireland in the 16th century
Scotland Scottish English Middle Scots and Scottish Gaelic the English during Scottish Reformation in the 16th century
Jamaica Jamaican Patois
African languages
of transported enslaved Africans 		the English during British colonial rule in Jamaica
Singapore Singaporean Mandarin Southern Chinese varieties:
Teochew, Cantonese, Hainanese
Standard Mandarin
Singapore Government during the Speak Mandarin Campaign
France Gallo-Romance
Gaulish
 Vulgar Latin Romans who annexed it to the Roman Empire (1st century BC-5th century AD),
Portugal Ibero-Romance Paleohispanic languages
Spain
Canary Islands Canarian Spanish Guanche Andalusian Spanish
Andalusians during the incorporation of the Canary Islands into the Crown of Castile
Mexico Mexican Spanish
indigenous languages of Mexico
 Spanish of the 15th century Spaniards during the Spanish Conquest
of the 15th century
Central Andes Andean Spanish
Quechua, Aymaran languages
Paraguay Paraguayan Spanish
Guaraní
Philippines
Chavacano
Sama, Tausug, Yakan, and Malay
Brazil Brazilian Portuguese Tupi, Bantu languages[22] Portuguese of the 15th century the Portuguese during the colonial period
Angola Angolan Portuguese
Kikongo
 the Portuguese during the colonial rule in Africa
Israel Modern Hebrew
Judeo-Arabic dialects, and other Jewish languages
and languages spoken by Jews		 Purified Hebrew constructed from Biblical and mishnaic Hebrew European Jewish immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who modernized and reintroduced Hebrew as a vernacular
Shetland and Orkney Insular Scots Norn Scots Acquisition by Scotland in the 15th century
Norway Bokmål Old Norwegian Danish Union with Danish crown, 1380–1814.
Argentina/Uruguay Rioplatense Spanish Neapolitan, various Italian Languages Spanish Italian immigration to Uruguay and Argentina
Belarus Belarusian Baltic languages Old East Slavic Assimilation of East Balts by East Slavs in the Middle Ages
Russia (Russian North) North Russian Finnic and Volgaic languages Russian Russification of the Chudes and Volga Finns

Superstrate influence on substrate

Area Resultant language Substrate Superstrate Superstrate introduced by
France Old French
Gallo-Romance
 Frankish
Merovingians' dominance of Gaul
around 500
England Middle English Old English Old Norman
Norman conquest
Greece Demotic Greek Medieval Greek
Ottoman Turkish
 Ottoman Turks following the Fall of Constantinople and during the subsequent occupation of Greece
Spain Early Modern Spanish Old Spanish
Mozarabic
)
conquest of Hispania, and the Arabic and Mozarabic speakers in al-Andalus who were absorbed into Castille and other Christian kingdoms during the Reconquista
Malta Maltese Siculo-Arabic Sicilian, later Italian and other Romance languages[23] Norman and Aragonese control, establishment of the Knights of St. John on the islands in the 16th century[24]
Romania, Moldova
Modern Romanian
Common Romanian, Old Romanian
 Slavic languages (first Proto-Slavic, then Old Church Slavonic, and later individual Slavic languages such as Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, and Bulgarian)
Polish-Lithuanian, and Russian Empires

See also

Look up stratum, substratum, substrate, superstratum, or superstrate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References

  1. ISBN 1843833123, pp. 192–214. [1]
  2. ^ Saarikivi, Janne (2006). Substrata Uralica: Studies on Finno-Ugrian substrate influence in Northern Russian dialects (Ph.D.). University of Helsinki. pp. 12–14.
  3. ^ Giovanni Battista Pellegrini, "Substrata", in Romance Comparative and Historical Linguistics, ed. Rebecca Posner et al. (The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter, 1980), 65.
  4. ^ Henri Guiter, "Sur le substrat gaulois dans la Romania", in Munus amicitae. Studia linguistica in honorem Witoldi Manczak septuagenarii, eds., Anna Bochnakowa & Stanislan Widlak, Krakow, 1995.
  5. ^ Eugeen Roegiest, Vers les sources des langues romanes: Un itinéraire linguistique à travers la Romania (Leuven, Belgium: Acco, 2006), 83.
  6. ISBN 978-2-87772-224-7
  7. ISBN 978-2-87772-224-7
  8. ^ a b Matasović, Ranko. 2007. “Insular Celtic as a Language Area”. In Tristam, Hildegard L.C. 2007, The Celtic Languages in Contact. Bonn: Papers from the Workship within the Framework of the XIII International Congress of Celtic Studies. Page 106.
  9. ^ Savignac, Jean-Paul. 2004. Dictionnaire Français-Gaulois. Paris: La Différence. Pages 26, 294-5.
  10. ^ Filppula, Markku, Klemola, Juhani and Paulasto, Heli. 2008. English and Celtic in Contact. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Pages 77-82
  11. ^ a b c d e Matasović, Ranko (2014). "Substratum words in Balto-Slavic". Filologija (60): 75–102.
  12. ^ Ringe, Don (2009-01-06). "The Linguistic Diversity of Aboriginal Europe". Language Log. Retrieved 2017-09-30.
  13. ^ a b Leschber, Corinna (2016). "On the stratification of substratum languages". Etymology and the European Lexicon: Proceedings of the 14th Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, 17–22 September 2012, Copenhagen. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.
  14. ^ a b c Schrijver, Peter (1997). "Animal, vegetable and mineral: some Western European substratum words". In Lubotsky, A. (ed.). Sound Law and Analogy. Amsterdam/Atlanta. pp. 293–316.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  15. ^ Witzel, Michael (1999). "Early Sources for South Asian Substrate Languages" (PDF). Mother Tongue.
  16. ISBN 9780520912793
    .
  17. ISBN 9780739109557
    .
  18. ^ Benedict (1990), Lewin (1976), Matsumoto (1975), Miller (1967), Murayama (1976), Shibatani (1990).
  19. ^ McWhorter, John (2007). "Mandarin Chinese: "Altaicization" or Simplification?". Language Interrupted: Signs of Non-Native Acquisition in Standard Language Grammars. Oxford University Press.
  20. ^ Hashimoto (1986), Janhunen (1996), McWhorter (2007).
  21. ^ For example, take replaced earlier niman in the lexical slot of a transitive verb for "to take", though archaic forms of to nim survived in England.
  22. ^ The Genesis and Development of Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese Archived 2017-10-10 at the Wayback Machine Page 246, etc
  23. OCLC 82586980.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link
    )
  24. OCLC 223378429
    .

Further reading
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