Bowden John. Behind the preposition: grammaticalisation of locatives in Oceanic languages

The Australian National University, Research School of Pacific Studies, 1992. — 92 p. — (Pacific Linguistics: Series B 107).All of the languages examined in this study are members of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The 'Oceanic Hypothesis', first proposed by Dempwolff (1934-38) says that the languages of Polynesia, the Austronesian languages of Melanesia, and most of the languages of Micronesia comprise a subgroup of the Austronesian family. The unity of Oceanic is no longer controversial, but the precise relationships among the Oceanic languages remain the subject of debate.