Jacob Wackernagel (11 December 1853 – 22 May 1938) was a
Swiss linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
,
Indo-Europeanist
Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical pro ...
and scholar of
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
. He was born in
Basel
, french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese
, neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...
, son of the philologist
Wilhelm Wackernagel
Wilhelm Wackernagel (23 April 1806, Berlin – 21 December 1869, Basel) was a German-Swiss philologist specializing in Germanic studies. He was the father of Indo-Europeanist Jacob Wackernagel.
He studied Classical and Germanic literature a ...
(1806–1869).
Biography
Jacob Wackernagel was born on 11 December 1853 in Basel to
Wilhelm Wackernagel
Wilhelm Wackernagel (23 April 1806, Berlin – 21 December 1869, Basel) was a German-Swiss philologist specializing in Germanic studies. He was the father of Indo-Europeanist Jacob Wackernagel.
He studied Classical and Germanic literature a ...
, 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
The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were a brother duo of German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers, and authors who together collected and published folklore. They are among the ...
. Jacob's father died when he was sixteen.
Wackernagel studied classical and Germanic philology and history in Basel (1871-1872),
Göttingen
Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911.
General information
The ori ...
(1872-1874) and
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
(1874-1875); he started a doctorate in 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 then began lecturing as Privatdozent in Basel in 1876-1877 winter semester. In 1879, at the age of 26, he became a successor of
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
as Professor of Greek.
[
He married Maria Stehlin, with whom he had eight children, in 1886. Two of their sons, Jakob and Hans Georg, became Basel professors.][
In 1902 he was offered a chair of comparative philology in the ]University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...
and was a Pro-Rector in 1912/13, but as a consequence of World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
he returned to Basel in 1915. In Basel he soon was appointed to the chair of linguistics and classical philology and held this position until his retirement in 1936. He taught for sixty years. In 1918-1919 he briefly became a Rector of the University; he held this position before in 1890. Wackernagel died on 22 May 1938 at home in Basel.[
]
Work
Wackernagel's major work is the ''Altindische Grammatik
The ''Altindische Grammatik'' is the monumental Sanskrit grammar by Jacob Wackernagel (1853–1938), after his death continued by Albert Debrunner, published in Göttingen between 1896 and 1957. The work presents a full discussion of Sanskrit phon ...
'', a comprehensive grammar of Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
.
He is best known among modern linguists and philologists for formulating Wackernagel's law, concerning the placement of unstressed words (enclitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...
sentential particles) in syntactic second position in Indo-European clauses (Wackernagel 1892).
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
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
the first component ends with a vowel and the second component begins with a vowel; when ''neither vowel is high'' the first vowel is without effect and the second is replaced by its long
Long may refer to:
Measurement
* Long, characteristic of something of great duration
* Long, characteristic of something of great length
* Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate
* Longa (music), note value in early music mens ...
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 German". 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."
Bibliography
* Jacob Wackernagel, ''Altindische Grammatik
The ''Altindische Grammatik'' is the monumental Sanskrit grammar by Jacob Wackernagel (1853–1938), after his death continued by Albert Debrunner, published in Göttingen between 1896 and 1957. The work presents a full discussion of Sanskrit phon ...
''
* 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
External links
Biography at Rutgers Database of Classical Scholars
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wackernagel, Jacob
1853 births
1938 deaths
People from Basel-Stadt
Linguists from Switzerland
Linguists of Germanic languages
Linguists of Indo-European languages
Sanskrit grammarians
Sanskrit scholars
Swiss Indologists
19th-century linguists
20th-century linguists
Members of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala