Stratum (linguistics)

The term substrate (from Latin stratum = layer) was about around 1875 by the Italian linguist GI Ascoli coined in connection with his analysis of the causes of sound change. Today the term is used mainly in the diachronic linguistics in the context of language contact and mixing and refers to both

• The original language of an area, the contact -induced change in one or more new immigrant languages ​​triggers and
• The results of this contact -induced change in the overlying language.

The latter are also called substrate interference. The overlapping language, which can also cause contact -induced change in the opposite direction is accordingly called superstrate.

Examples of substrate languages

Takes a linguistic community the language of a migrant, often conquering people, the overlapping language can be influenced by the habits of the native speaker. This happened, for example, with the European colonial language Latin or with the North Germanic, which spread northward to the original Sámi areas.

Examples of substrate influences

Substrate interferences are frequently found in phonology, because the speaker of the source language often retain their peculiarities of pronunciation and intonation in language change. The syntax and (more rarely) the morphology can be affected. In contrast, substrate influence limited vocabulary mostly on areas for which the mass of the newly immigrated speaker does not have names ( for example floor, local and river names or animal and plant names), or which were not needed in the contact. For example, held in the French Gallic name of the lark, although the Romans, of course, knew this.