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 millennium
bce and attempts to find a (socio)linguistic model to describe the type of interactions
that can be traced between Akkadian and local Levantine languages. It is
argued that we are not dealing with cases of language contact in the traditional
sense, but with cases of second language acquisition (SLA), since there is no evidence
for sufficient contact between Akkadian and the local languages to cause the
attested interference features within a contact-linguistic
framework. The features in
question can, however, be explained as the result of second language learning by
local scribes.