魯凱語包括六個主要方言，分佈於南臺灣。依方言的地理位置來看可區分為東邊 的大南（ Tanan ）方言，位於臺東縣，南邊的霧臺（ Budai ）、大武（ Labuan ），位於 屏東縣； 還有北邊的茂林（ Maga ）、萬山（ Mantauran ）、多納（ Tona ）等方言，位 於高雄縣，合稱「下三社」。依方言的詞彙、語音、構詞以及句法比較，可把魯凱方言分為 兩個支群；霧臺、大武及大南屬於一支，茂林及多納另成一支。萬山方言在魯凱族語中的定 位則有些困難，因為本方言經過了不少語音及語法變化。在語音上，萬山的擦音 /v、z、h/ 對應其他魯凱方言的濁塞音 /b、d/、g/ （見 Li，1977 ）。 在語法上，萬山方言 (i) 缺 一般南島語所具有的格位標記，(ii) 只有附著式代名詞，(iii) 另外， 又發展出種「動詞 及賓語的相呼應關係」。 本文主要探討萬山方言所展現的句法關係，特別是主語和賓語彼此間的語法和語意的特色， 並由歷史的演變的角度來解釋該方言的「動詞與賓語的呼應關係」。我們發現：(i) 第三人 稱代詞乃經過虛化和再分析， 成為句法功能標記，(ii) 詞序自由是成為中心有標語言的結 構，(iii) 句法關係由語意來決定。文末附一篇故事說明萬山中的「動詞與賓語的呼應關係 」。

　　　　　The position of Mantauran in the Rukai family remains controversial because the structure of this dialect has been obscured by drastic phonological and syntactic changes. Phonologically, it has undergone a process of spirantization, PR *b> Mt v; PR * d and d > Mt; PR * g > Mt h. Syntactically, it differs from the other Rukai dialects and the Formosan languages as a whole: (1) it lacks the nominal case marking commonly found in most of these languages, (2) it has bound pronouns which tend to coalesce with the verb stem, (3) the third person pronoun has been reanalyzed as a "non-agent" agreement marker. The present paper investigates the nature of grammatical relations in Mantauran and analyzes the syntactic and semantic properties of subjects and objects in this language. I try to account for the development of the "verb-object" agreement in this dialect from a historical perspective. I show that in order to understand the synchronic variations mentioned above, we should take into account the development of the language and argue that (1) the third-person pronoun has taken on an important role in the coding of grammatical relations as a result of grammaticalization and reanalysis, (2) word order-- largely determined by pragmatic factors-- can be accounted for if we take into consideration the syntactic changes undergone, i.e., Mantauran is turning into a head-marking language, (3) grammatical relations are semantically-based. The pronominal agreement of Mantauran is further illustrated by a text given in the appendix.