Superstratum

Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Wikipedia.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Superstratum

traces in one language of a former language, which was the language of culture, government, or interethnic communication or the language of a conquering people. The term also refers to the language exerting such influence. For example, Russian has a superstratum of Old Church Slavonic and, through it, of Middle Greek; English has a superstratum of French and Latin. The influence of a superstratum is apparent chiefly in the lexicon (in borrowings and calques) and in compound sentences and other constructions that are typical of written language.

Mentioned in ?

References in periodicals archive ?

Isolates and cloned sequences of the superstratum compost

The 78 sequences derived from the superstratum compost were classified into 48 OTUs with at least 97% similarity.

The bacterial communities in the superstratum layer displayed higher relative abundance and diversity than the bacterial communities in the middle-level and substrate layers (Figures 1, 2, and 3).

Molecular phylogenetic diversity and spatial distribution of bacterial communities in cooling stage during swine manure composting

(6) Particularly the folk cultures with a Lutheran superstratum (as, for example, Estonian and Finnish), have not, for religious reasons, favoured the Catholic "magical" subordination of the dead to clerical jurisdiction (cf.

Communicating across the border: what burial laments can tell us about old beliefs/Suheldes ule piiri: mida matuseitkud vanadest uskumustest konelda voivad

The basic idea is that, while relexification of various substratum lexicons on the basis of a single superstratum language provides the speakers of an early creole community with a common vocabulary, it is the major cause of variation in an incipient creole.

In the representation in (1), relabelling proceeds on the basis of phonetic strings found in the superstratum language.

In Lefebvre and Lumsden (1994a), it is proposed that the functional-category lexical entries of the copied lexicon are relabelled on the basis of major-category lexical items of the superstratum language and that the distributional properties of the superstratum form must be similar to those of the copied lexical entry.

In Lefebvre and Lumsden (1989a, 1994a, 1994b; see also Lefebvre 1998: 10, 30-41), it is claimed that, in creole genesis, the process of relexification is used by speakers of the substratum languages as a tool for acquiring a second language, the superstratum language.

Relexification of several lexicons on the basis of a single superstratum language provides the early creole community with a common vocabulary.

In the scenario of creole genesis presented in Lumsden and Lefebvre (1994c), relexification applies when the speakers of the substratum languages are targeting the superstratum language.

This lingua franca was needed to permit communication not only between the speakers of the substratum languages and those of the superstratum language, but also between the speakers of the substratum languages themselves (see e.g.

So, the variety of French the creators of Haitian creole were exposed to provided the superstratum material on which Haitian creole was formed.

The interplay of relexification and levelling in creole genesis and development(*)