Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/99

 POLYNESIAN LANGUAGES. 81 still, in the more improved and mixed dialects. This is most remarkable in the class of words con- nected with the metaphysical structure of language, and which, from their very nature, did not admit of being displaced by foreign words, such as the substantive and auxiliary verbs ; the prepositions representing the most abstract of the relations of cases ; the termination representing a possessive case, and the inseparable particles representing a passive and a transitive signification of the verb ; and, perhaps, above all, the common class of particles. * The merit of distinctly pointing out the existence of a great Polynesian language, as pervading the Indian Archipelago, belongs to Mr Marsden ; of all the writers who have treated of the literature, his- tory, or manners of the Archipelago, the most la- borious, accurate, able, and original ; and previous to whose writings we possessed neither correct nor philosophical accounts of these singular countries, t ther to direct and where to stop their inquiries, for wherever the evident meaning and origin of the pu teles- of any lan- guage can be found, they^e is the certam source of the whole/' Diversions of Purley, Vol. I. p. 147. The learned Reland points out the extr ordinary connec- tion between the Malay, the other languages of the Archipe- lago, and the Madagascar, but he draws no important or inte- resting conclusion from this singular fact Diss. XL De Lin- guis Insularum Orientalium. VOL. li. F
 * " The particles of every language shall teach them whi-