THE GRAMMATICAL PROPERTIES OF MASS NOUNS - AN APHASIA CASE-STUDY

A patient (F.A.) is described who, as a consequence of brain damage, s hows an isolated deficit concerning the use, across a series of tasks, of the grammatical properties of mass/non-countable nouns. Her use of grammar is otherwise perfect. This behaviour dissociates from that of other patients who have severe grammatical difficulties, but do not s how any impairment in the mass nouns tasks that F.A. fails. This case is thought to demonstrate how specific grammatical rules, that are sai d to be stored at the lemma level of lexical retrieval, are indeed ind ependently represented and accessible. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.