Vision
The CTB, the scientific research centre of the KANTL, is responsible for making the linguistic and literary heritage of Flanders available and ensuring its continued accessibility. To this end, the centre collaborates with universities, (commercial) publishers, archives, museums, and organizations such as the Institute for the Dutch Language (INT) in Leiden, with which a cooperation agreement has been concluded. The CTB is primarily, though not exclusively, active in historical linguistics and literary studies. By enriching linguistic and literary heritage with digital information, the centre also contributes to the digital humanities. Special attention is given to the use and development of advanced text technology.
In this respect, CTB contributes to the core taks of the KANTL, such as
1° to ensure the preservation, sustainable management, accessibility, and enrichment of linguistic and literary sources as the heritage of the cultural community;
2° to disseminate research results in the field of Dutch linguistics and literary studies.
We often work for an academic audience, but just as often we make heritage accessible to a broad public.
In order to make the linguistic and literary heritage of Flanders visible and accessible in as many ways as possible, we summarize our work in six concrete focus areas:
In summary, our work can be structured around the following concrete core focus areas:
- We collect and compile our own digital language corpora covering the entire period for which Dutch texts have been preserved, with a particular focus on the southern Low Countries.
- We publish prose and poetry in accordance with the principles of scholarly editing.
- We create and publish editions of correspondence, both in print and in digital form.
- We publish significant diaries, as well as other ego-documents and text-genetic sources.
- We document the dynamics of contemporary Dutch and the changing relationships between the varieties of Dutch.
