ABSTRACT William Marsden, author of The History of Sumatra was above all, a philologist and his linguistic theses were the lynchpin of all his work, including the History. In his 1782 ‘Remarks on Sumatran and cognate Languages’ paper Marsden made the first scholarly identification of the Malayo-Polynesian language family based on sound linguistic principles. It was the first correct identification of any language family still recognised today. Yet, from the mid19th century Marsden’s linguistic achievements have been ignored, underrated, or misappropriated. This is largely because of discontinuities in the transmission of the history of linguistics. Many advances in the field of philology have been misattributed and while Schlegel, Grimm and Bopp have been seen as the ‘fathers of the new philology’, knowledge of British linguistic scholars, especially Marsden, slipped from the West’s communal memory. Despite moves in recent years to reinstate Britain in the received history of philological knowledge, Marsden is still overlooked or damned with faint praise.

中文翻译：

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苏门答腊历史背后的学者威廉·马斯登

摘要 苏门答腊历史的作者威廉·马斯登首先是一位语言学家，他的语言学论文是他所有工作的关键，包括历史。在他 1782 年的“对苏门答腊语和同源语言的评论”论文中，马斯登首次基于合理的语言原则对马来-波利尼西亚语系进行了学术鉴定。这是今天仍然被认可的任何语系的第一个正确识别。然而，从 19 世纪中叶开始，马斯登的语言成就一直被忽视、低估或盗用。这主要是因为语言学历史传播的不连续性。语言学领域的许多进步都被错误地归因，而施莱格尔、格林和波普被视为“新语言学之父”，英国语言学者的知识，尤其是马斯登，从西方的共同记忆中消失了。尽管近年来采取措施恢复英国在公认的语言学知识史上的地位，但马斯登仍然被忽视或受到微弱的赞美。