本篇文章依循Croft (2001) 在 “Radical Construction Grammar” 所提出的理論架構來分析卑南語南王方言的主要子句結構，目的是為了呈現結構語法如何從類型學角度闡明不同結構之間的相似相異點。當我們比較卑南語和英語的子句系統，我們發現其間存有極大的不同。在英語，所有主要子句類型都必須要有動詞，因此反映出他們有一個共同的母結構；反之，卑南語有三種不同的子句系統，包括：動詞系統、繁詞 (copula)系統、以及所有跟存在詞位有關的系統，而這些系統都各自源於不同的母結構。

The purpose of this paper is to apply Croft’s (2001) Radical Construction Grammar approach to an analysis of the major clause types in Puyuma in order to show how a constructional approach can illuminate the relationship among constructions from a typological perspective. When we compare the Puyuma clause system with that of English, we find the clause systems of the two languages are strikingly different. In English, all major clause types contain a verb and reflect a shared parent construction. On the other hand, Puyuma has three distinct systems: the verbal system, the copula system, and the system based on existential morphemes, and each with its own parent construction(s).