**** Strata -- super- and sub-
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Strata, in pidgin and creole studies, are most often reducible to two binary status positions, the substrate and the superstrate. A third type of relation, the adstrate, usually mitigates the formation of a pidgin or creole language by equalizing power relations, so it is usually ignored. Most creolists using strata as a theoretical tool focus primarily on hierarchical flows of power from superstrate to substrate. While this is justifiable, it can serve to obscure more equitable relations as among substrate groups in cases of tertiary hybridization. These groups are perhaps micro-adstrates but macro-substrates.