Jacob Wackernagel

Jacob Wackernagel (; 11 December 1853 – 22 May 1938) was a Swiss linguist, Indo-Europeanist and scholar of Sanskrit. He was born in Basel, son of the philologist Wilhelm Wackernagel (1806–1869).

Biography Jacob Wackernagel was born on 11 December 1853 in Basel to Wilhelm Wackernagel, a Professor of German Language and Literature in Basel, and his second wife, Maria Salome (nee Sarasin). He was named after his godfather, Jacob Grimm of the Brothers Grimm. Jacob's father died when he was sixteen.

Wackernagel studied classical and Germanic philology and history at Basel (1871–1872), Göttingen (1872–1874) and Leipzig (1874–1875); he started a doctorate at Basel in 1875, writing his thesis on "the beginnings of the study of 'pathology' (in a sense, a rudimentary study of speech sounds) in the Greek grammarians". He defended that thesis in 1876, among his examiners were Nietzsche and Heyne. Wackernagel then spent a short time studying at Oxford and began lecturing as Privatdozent in Basel in the winter semester of 1876–1877. In 1879, at the age of 26, he became a successor of Friedrich Nietzsche as Professor of Greek. ).

Another law named after him (Wackernagel 1889 ) is Wackernagel's law of lengthening (Dehnungsgesetz in German ), also sometimes known as the law of lengthening in composition (Regelung der Dehnung in der Zusammensetzung ): in some compound words in Greek the first component ends with a vowel and the second component begins with a vowel; when neither vowel is high the first vowel is elided without effect and the second is replaced by its long counterpart.

Lectures on Syntax Wackernagel read two courses in 1918–1919, while being a Rector, on "the elements of syntax with special reference to Greek, Latin and Germanic". Lectures notes were taken by two of his students. "First series" of lectures were published in 1920, it contained themes of "number, voice, tense, mood, and the non-finite forms of the verb". The book was successful, and in 1924 the "second series" were published "on gender, nouns and adjectives, pronouns, the article, prepositions, and negation". Second edition was published in 1926 and 1928. The book was translated into English by David Langslow in 2009. Andreas Willi of the University of Oxford praised both Wackernagel's work and Langslow's translation, writing "A hallmark feature of Wackernagel's Lectures is their accessible style, which makes them easy to read from cover to cover. Langslow impressively succeeds in preserving this feature: while not being slavish, his translation is both accurate and idiomatic."

Selected works

Jacob Wackernagel, Altindische Grammatik Jacob Wackernagel, Lectures on Syntax: with special reference to Greek, Latin, and Germanic, edited and translated by David Langslow, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009 (original edition: 1920–1924).

Notes and references