Printer Friendly
Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary
3,914,257,552 visitors served.
forum Join the Word of the Day Mailing List For webmasters
?
Dictionary/
thesaurus
Medical
dictionary
Legal
dictionary
Financial
dictionary
Acronyms
 
Idioms
Encyclopedia
Wikipedia
encyclopedia
?

Substratum
(redirected from Linguistic substratum)

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Wikipedia 0.01 sec.
substratum [¦səb′strad·əm]
(geology)
Any layer underlying the true soil.

Substratum 

remnants of an ethnic group’s former native language that have been retained in the language replacing the first, original language. The term also designates the original language itself, for example, the Celtic substratum in French, the Dacian substratum in Rumanian, the pre-Indo-European substratum—Hurrian-Urartaean—in Armenian, and the Iranian substratum in some Uzbek dialects.

The influence of the substratum may be observed at both the phonetic and phonological levels, in changes in articulation and in the modification of distinctive features. In grammar, it may be observed in functional changes in the original grammatical forms and in loan translations of syntactic constructions; in the lexicon, it is manifested by borrowings and caiques.



Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit the webmaster's page for free fun content.
?Page tools
Printer friendly
Cite / link
Feedback
Mentioned in?   Encyclopedia browser?   Full browser?
No references found
 
 
 
Encyclopedia
?

Terms of Use | Privacy policy | Feedback | Advertise with Us | Copyright © 2012 Farlex, Inc.
Disclaimer
All content on this website, including dictionary, thesaurus, literature, geography, and other reference data is for informational purposes only. This information should not be considered complete, up to date, and is not intended to be used in place of a visit, consultation, or advice of a legal, medical, or any other professional.