Grammatical relations in a typology of agreement systems

It has been suggested that grammatical relations should be sufficient to determine agreement relations within the clausal domain. Three types of counter-example to this proposal are presented. Then evidence is presented which suggests that the rules for agreement require access to thematic roles and to communicative functions. In addition, they need to refer to surface case. While grammatical relations provide a useful part of a typology of agreement, they are far from sufficient.