Substratum

=Translations

sostrato | substrat | Substrat

Article

Concept introduced by G.I. Ascoli in the 1860s, a linguistic substratum is an endemic language that, in a context of language superposition, influences an intrusive language called a superstratum. The seminal discussion by Ascoli opened the field to the concept of strata, which, with several modifications and evolutions in the studies that followed, became a crucial model for the description of multilingual areas.

Examples

For corpus-languages, substrata are quite elusive and can only be identified basing on historical information about the demographics of specific areas. They tend to emerge in corpora as low-ranking codes as opposed to the standard scribal tradition of more prestigious superstrata (cf. Anderson and Vita 2016, who present three case studies from the Semitic and Hurrian environments).
An example from the Anatolian area is represented by the presence of grammatical mistakes in the Old Assyrian corpus from Kaneš that depend on interference from the Hittite morph-syntax, e.g. the lack of proper gender marking on the finite verbal form, as in:

Šašalika (wife of Ni-ki-li-et) […] ašar libbi=šu (expected: libbi=ša) illak
“Šašalika may go where (s)he wants” (TC III 214a)

References

Andrason, A. and Vita, J. (2016). Contact Languages of the Ancient Near East – Three more Case Studies (Ugaritic-Hurrian, Hurro-Akkadian and Canaano-Akkadian). Journal of Language Contact 9, 293-334. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/19552629-00902004