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How did William Marsden describe the relationship between Malagasy Malay and Pacific languages?
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Austronesian languages
Major divisions of the Austronesian languages.
By 1834, the British linguist William Marsden described the relationship between these languages by categorizing them geographically. He referred to languages such as Malagasy and Malay as "Hither Polynesian," while designating the languages of the central and eastern Pacific as "Further Polynesian." Although he recognized these connections, he did not propose a specific name for the language family as a whole.1