Wackernagel’s Law and the Fall of the Lydian Empire

Abstract

This paper offers a novel reading of the Delphic oracle's response to Croesus's question of whether he should attack Persia (Herodotus 1), by focusing on a previously unacknowledged feature of the oracular answer: the preposing of the adjective μεγάλην. Preposing is a construction in which an element occurs before the start of the clause proper. In the oracle's response, preposing serves a corrective function. As preposing creates surface exceptions to Wackernagel's Law, it is only through an accurate understanding of the "Law" that we can even detect this construction. Working within a framework of (neo-) Gricean pragmatic theory, I detail the semantic and pragmatic contribution of preposing in the oracular response. More broadly speaking, I suggest that Gricean pragmatics can provide new insights into classical texts by offering a principled method for decoding implicit meaning.

Kalkuliertes Missverstehen?

“…Für die Anwendung der (Neo-)Grice'schen Pragmatik auf einen antiken Text vgl. Goldstein (2013), der die Sprache von (scheinbar) doppeldeutigen Orakelsprüchen (v. a. die Antwort des Orakels von Delphi auf Krösus' Frage, ob er das Perserreich angreifen solle) in Hinblick auf ihre pragmatischen Implikaturen untersucht. 17 Nach Grice handelt es sich dabei nicht in erster Linie um normative Maximen, sondern um Prinzipien, deren Einhaltung man beim Gegenüber in der Regel erwartet.…”