Introduction

Not every linguist has a law named after them, but, even among those who do, Jacob Wackernagel is exceptional. First, his law is one of very few (especially from the nineteenth century) that are syntactic in nature, having to do with the relative ordering of words. Secondly, it differs from the commonly recognized sound laws (e.g. those of Grimm, Verner, Grassmann and Holtzmann; see Collinge 1985 for an overview) in that its scope is tremendous: far from being a single, punctual event as were the sound laws of history under the Neogrammarian conception (Osthoff & Brugmann 1878), Wackernagel’s law (he argues) left its traces in pretty much all of the Indo-European languages, even if its status as a synchronic principle of grammatical organization varies substantially. Thirdly, and relatedly, Wackernagel’s law is still the subject of active research today among specialists in various languages, far beyond the Indo-European family which provided the context for the original law. That this is the case can be seen from the nearly 700 Google Scholar citations that Wackernagel’s (1892) hundred-page article has accrued by the date of writing. Wackernagel’s law can safely be said to have entered the coveted realm of being “more cited than read”. This introduction has three aims. In the following section we provide a brief biographical sketch, along with a quick summary of the article and a concise statement of the law itself. Section 2 discusses the law’s subsequent reception from publication until the present day, again without pretence of being exhaustive. Section 3 outlines our rationale for, and the decisions we have made during, the translation process.