substratum
In historical linguistics, the traces left in a language by an earlier language whose speakers shifted to it. Structural features, rather than vocabulary alone, are the usual evidence, since structure travels only under sustained contact.
Where this term appears
- Jagannath Puri and the Ratha Yatra Temples
These are the named positions. A tribal substratum absorbed into Vaishnavism.
- Who is Kali? Deities
Kali is the fierce, dark goddess of time, death and liberation, a supreme form of the Devi in the Shakta and Tantric traditions. Her name comes from *kala*, time…
- What is Nyaya? Philosophy
…er real nor unreal, a momentary product of ignorance thrown up on the substratum and then cancelled by knowledge — the very same structure as its famous rope mistaken for a snake.
- Is Ram Setu man-made? What the geology actually says Journal
An old rocky-and-coral substratum with a young sand veneer on top: that is not a contradiction, it is a normal coastal formation.
- Is Sanskrit the mother of all languages? Journal
Following Kuiper, he takes these as marks of a substratum rather than of simple word-borrowing.