Superstratum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A superstratum or superstrate is the counterpart to a substratum. When one language succeeds another, the former is termed the superstratum and the latter the substratum. In the case of French, for example, Vulgar Latin is the superstrate and Gaulic is the substrate.
It is also used to describe an imposed linguistic element, akin to what English underwent after 1066 with Norman. The Neo-Latin and Neo-Greek coinages adopted by European languages (and now, languages worldwide) to describe scientific topics (anatomy, medicine, botany, zoology, all the '-ology' words, etc.) can also be termed a superstratum, although for this last, adstratum could just as easily be used.
