Do we need to access the spoken form of a word in order to retrieve th
e word's spelling or in order to understand the meaning of its written
form? In this paper we focus on the relationship between lexical phon
ology and orthography specifically in production and we present the ca
se of a neurologically impaired individual who is often unable to prov
ide the correct spoken name of an object although he may be able to wr
ite its name correctly. We argue that this evidence is seriously probl
ematic for the hypothesis of obligatory phonological mediation and con
clude that orthographic lexical forms can indeed be independently acce
ssed for production without the mediating role of phonology.