Multidirectional Lexical Borrowings in the Ancient Near East in the 2nd Millennium BC

This paper investigates how Mycenaean Greek and Hittite languages can be analyzed in the light of the new acquisitions of historical sociolinguistics. In absence of living informants, the study of contact phenomena, which sheds light on a broader extra-linguistic scenario, could be an effective approach in a micro-sociolinguistic perspective. Particularly, the potential role played by Hittite as an intermediary between Akkadian and Mycenaean Greek will be analyzed. Interference phenomena seem to occur on two levels: on the one hand, there are lexemes directly borrowed from Hittite into Mycenaean while, on the other hand, we have found terms of a Semitic derivation where Hittite acts as an intermediary.