From glosses to the Linguistic Nature of Canaano-Akkadian

Abstract

The present paper elaborates on the linguistic status of Canaano-Akkadian. The authors demonstrate that the graphic variations of the glosses that are employed more than once by the same scribe reveal the attitude of the Canaanite scribes towards their mothers tongue: scribes considered the Canaanite language as a lowvariety in contrast to the high status of Akkadian. The result of this empirical study makes it possible to design a model of the sociolinguistic diglossial situation from which Canaano-Akkadian emerged. Given this sociolinguistic origin of the idiom, the authors further analyse Canaano-Akkadian within the framework of language contact phenomenon, detecting in it possible traits typical of pidgins, creoles, koinés, mixed-languages and/or jargons. This review indicates that the scribal code is unable to be categorized by making use of one taxonomical class: rather, it displays properties that are located on the boundary of two categories and/or belong to more than one taxonomical class. As a result, a new – dynamic and partially fuzzy – definition of Canaano-Akkadian is proposed. Accordingly, the tongue is classified as a professional high-status jargon (written and also spoken “indoor”), two-source mixed-language, “soft” koiné of proximate but not mutually intelligibly underlying systems, idiom that, having emerged from diglossia, contributed to a triglossial situation at the scribal centres, and linguistic system with traces of tertiary hybridization typical of pidgins and tendencies present in post-pidgin continua.