Key Linguistic Concepts: Acrolect, Substratum, and More
1. Acrolect
The variety of speech that is closest to a standard prestige language, especially in an area in which a creole is spoken. For example, Standard Jamaican English is the acrolect where Jamaican creole is spoken. Variety of language which, of a series of varieties spoken predominantly at different social levels, has the highest prestige or is closest to a standard form. Especially in studies of creoles: e.g. of the varieties spoken in Jamaica the acrolect has the fewest creole features and is thus most similar to Standard English elsewhere.
Mesolect
An intermediate point in the post creole, which refers to a situation where in a creole language consists of a spectrum of varieties between those most and least similar to the superstrate language. Variety of language intermediate between an acrolect and a basilect.
Basilect
The variety of speech which is most remote from the prestige variety. E.g.: Jamaican creole = basilect / Standard Jamaican English: acrolect. The variety of a language which, of series predominantly spoken at different levels, has the lowest prestige or is most distant from a standard form. Especially in studies of creoles, where the basilect is the variety with the most creole features.
2. Substratum
A stratum is a language that influences (or is influenced) by another through contact. A substratum has lower power or prestige than another 1. Native languages. A language formerly spoken by some population which has influenced their acquisition of a language spoken later. E.g., under the Roman Empire, languages such as Gaulish or Iberian were replaced by Latin. But it has often been argued that, in learning Latin, speakers of these languages carried over certain phonetic and other features, and that these are reflected in modern Romance dialects.
2. A language spoken by some population which has influenced that of a group by which they were dominated. Thus English as possible influence on the evolution of Anglo-French after the Norman conquest; also any several West African languages as a factor in the formation of pidgins spoken in the West Indies.
Superstratum
It has higher power or prestige. Dominant languages. A language spoken by a dominant group which has influenced that of a population subordinate to it. E.g. speakers of English were dominated after the Norman conquest by speakers whose native language was Anglo-French; hence Anglo-French became a superstratum that has influenced the history of English.
3. Interference / Transfer
The term refers to the fact of speakers applying knowledge than their native language to a second language. The influence that knowledge of one language has on the way one speaks another: e.g. in the speech of bilinguals, or as a cause of errors by someone learning a new language. More negative meaning in the acquisition. Transfer can be positive as well.
4. Sociolect
Form of speech associated with a social class or similar group within a society, as opposed to a dialect in the ordinary sense, associated with a geographical place or region, occupational groups as well.
5. Interlanguage
Term for a dynamic linguistic system that has been developed by a learner of a second language who has not become fully proficient yet but it is approximating to the target language: preserving same features of their L1, or overgeneralization target languages rules in speaking or writing and creating renovations. 1. A language, or an artificial system like a language, used as an intermediary, e.g. in translation, between two others. Lingua Franca used as an intermediary. Dynamic notion. A developing system when learning the other languages. 2. A system of rules said to develop, in the mind of someone learning foreign language, which is intermediate between that of their native language and that of the one being learned.
6. Target Language
A language that a non-native speaker is in the process of learning. That which one aims to teach, learn, translate into, etc.
7. Lexifier Language
The dominant language of a particular pidgin or creole language that provides the basis for the majority of vocabulary. Vocabulary provided by a dominant group to a new one (pidgin or creoles).
8. Fossilisation
Process in which incorrect languages becomes a habit and connect can be corrected and which is different from the target language. Form, construction no longer used freely. Thus the hue of hue and cry is a fossilised form used only in that phrase or, possibly, in allusion to it; a sentence like The devil take the hindmost! Has a fossilised construction in which subjects, verbs, etc. cannot be freely combined.
9. Analytic Structure
When relationships between words are indicated by the occurrence of other words (or by the word order) (isolating language).
Synthetic Structure
When relationships between words are indicated by particles / morphemes added to one of the words (inflecting languages).
10. Reduplication
A morphological process by which all or part of a form is repeated.
11. Compound
A word formed from two or more units that are themselves words.
12. Dative of Advantage (Ethical Device)
Structure in which the dative pronoun indicates the person who has a general interest in the activity.
13. Deadjectival Verb
Verb derived from an adjective (weaken from weak).
14. Modality
What allows speakers to attach expressions of belief, attitude and obligation to statements.
15. Redundancy
The use of more words or morphemes than necessary when expressing an idea (concordance is an example of redundancy; obligatory redundancy: “he swims”). Sometimes it is necessary. The real definition is the repetition of an idea.
16. Focus
A grammatical category that determines which part of the structure contributes new, non-derivable, or contrastive information.
17. Topicalisation
Mechanism of syntax that establishes an expression as the sentence or clause topic by having it appear at the front of it. The process of forming a derived construction in which one element is a topic. E.g. that of Beer I see as a necessity, with topic beer, from that of the ‘untopicalized’ I see beer as a necessity.
18. RP
Standard accent of Standard English in England.
19. Voiced
Sounds are those produced with vibration of the vocal cords in the production of speech.
Voiceless
Produced without vibration of the vocal cords.
20. Aspiration
Strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or stops. Whose release is followed audibly by a short period in which the vocal cords are not vibrating. Thus the t of English tea is usually aspirated.
21. Rhoticity
Having an r. E.g. dialects spoken in the south-west of England are ‘rhothic’, since they retain an [r] in words like tower or turn, which have phonetically no [r] in ‘non-rhotic’ dialects. Also as a general term for ‘r’-sounds: a class of rhotics will thus include a lingual [r].
22. Conflation
Not differentiation of two different phonemes. E.g: Philippine English: letters f and p have the same sound: /p/.