‘On passing Time’
Linguist Marc van Oostendorp has uncovered the historical developments of rhythm in Dutch texts. The recent mass digitization of texts by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB; National Library of the Netherlands) offered him unique opportunities.
In cooperation with an IT programmer at the KB Marc van Oostendorp compared texts of many genres, like newspapers and radio broadcasts, in order to uncover accent patterns. Van Oostendorp claims that the rhythm of a language, as learned by unborn babies, will surface consciously and unconsciously in written texts.
The KB fellowship is a joint venture of NIAS (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences) and KB (Koninklijke Bibliotheek/National Library of the Netherlands) and aims at making known to a wider community of scholars the possibilities of research of the digitized and non-digitized collections of the KB.
Previous KB fellows include Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Robert Darnton, Jonathan Israel and Lisa Jardine. Marc van Oostendorp became the first Fellow ‘Digital Humanities’.
The lecture will take place in the auditorium of the KB at 8 pm. (Coffee/tea at 7.30 pm). Aula van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Prins Willem-Alexanderhof 5, 2595 BE Den Haag.
Entrance is free.
Please, do register at www.kb.nl/fellowlezing.
Dutch press release: http://kb.nl/nieuws/nieuwsarchief-2013/lezing-marc-van-oostendorp-in-de-kb-on-passing-time.
