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.