The grammatical properties of mass nouns: an aphasia case study.

A patient (F.A.) is described who, as a consequence of brain damage, shows 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 show any impairment in the mass nouns tasks that F.A. fails. This case is thought to demonstrate how specific grammatical rules, that are said to be stored at the lemma level of lexical retrieval, are indeed independently represented and accessible.