There is no complete and comprehensive scientifically based description of the grammars of the two official languages spoken in the Netherlands, Dutch and Frisian. This must be seen a serious defect in a period in which language is considered an important aspect of cultural identity and cultural heritage, in which a large number of people learn the languages in question as their second language, in which educated speakers have a general lack of grammatical knowledge on their native language, and in which Dutch is an important object of study in general linguistic theory and related fields of research.

This proposal aims at the construction of a comprehensive and authoritative scientific grammar for Dutch and Frisian in the form of a virtual language institute: het Taalportaal/the Language Portal. The Language Portal will be built around an interactive knowledge base of the current grammatical knowledge of Dutch and Frisian. The present proposal involves financial funding for the creation of this knowledge base and the technical infrastructure needed for establishing the Language Portal as a whole. Once established, the Language Portal will be hosted, maintained, updated and extended by a consortium of organizations.

• dutch grammar
• frisian linguistics
• theoretical linguistics