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Agreement: Terms and Boundaries* Greville G. Corbett Surrey Morphology Group, University of Surrey 1. Introduction Agreement is increasingly recognized as of interest not just for syntax, semantics and morphology, but also for acquisition, psycholinguistics and computational applications. As evidence of the interest of psycholinguists see Clahsen and Hansen (1993), Nichol (1995), Vigliocco, Butterworth and Garrett, (1996), Vigliocco and Nicol (1998). Given this interest from “outside”, it is particularly important that we should ensure communication across disciplines.1 Unfortunately the terminology is muddled, and important choices in analysis are made sometimes as much by tradition as by argument. This paper is therefore a “house-keeping” exercise. It lays out some key terms and discusses the analytic choices available, with appropriate examples. It arises from a current project, building a typological database of agreement phenomena.2 While the author will take a position on each point, the aim is as much to clarify the issues as to argue for this particular position. Why has this confused situation arisen? Partly because agreement is a highly interesting area, which involves several interlocking phenomena. Different investigators look at the canonical cases and see different facets as the essential ones. We fasten on certain aspects (often led by terms which embody particular traditions) and then are confused when colleagues take up on other aspects and seem to be missing the point. Furthermore, what many would take as the canonical instances of agreement are relatively unusual, cross-linguistically (see Sierwierska 1999: 238-239). 2. Definitions Let us start from the following working definition of agreement: The term agreement commonly refers to some systematic covariance between a semantic or formal