The Use of Akkadian in the Second Millennium bce Levant: Language Contact and Bilingualism or not?

This article focuses on the use of Akkadian in the Levant during the second millenniumbce and attempts to find a (socio)linguistic model to describe the type of interactionsthat can be traced between Akkadian and local Levantine languages. It isargued that we are not dealing with cases of language contact in the traditionalsense, but with cases of second language acquisition (SLA), since there is no evidencefor sufficient contact between Akkadian and the local languages to cause theattested interference features within a contact-linguisticframework. The features inquestion can, however, be explained as the result of second language learning bylocal scribes.