From "some butter" to "a butter": An investigation of mass and count representation and processing

This paper investigates the representation of mass and count nouns at the lexical-syntactic level, an issue that has not been addressed to date in psycholinguistic theories. A single case study is reported of a man with aphasia, R.A.P., who showed a countability specific deficit that affected proces...

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Main Authors: Fieder, N., Nickels, L., Biedermann, Britta-Andrea, Best, W.
Format: Journal Article
Published: Routledge 2014
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/43429
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author Fieder, N.
Nickels, L.
Biedermann, Britta-Andrea
Best, W.
author_facet Fieder, N.
Nickels, L.
Biedermann, Britta-Andrea
Best, W.
author_sort Fieder, N.
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description This paper investigates the representation of mass and count nouns at the lexical-syntactic level, an issue that has not been addressed to date in psycholinguistic theories. A single case study is reported of a man with aphasia, R.A.P., who showed a countability specific deficit that affected processing of mass noun grammar. R.A.P. frequently substituted mass noun determiners (e.g., some, much) with count noun determiners (e.g., a, many). Experimental investigations determined that R.A.P. had a modality-neutral lexical-syntactic impairment.Furthermore, a series of novel experiments revealed that R.A.P.'s processing of mass noun determiners varied depending on how mass nouns were depicted (single vs. multiple depictions) and how congruent these were with the conceptual-semantic information of target determiners (e.g., "some" corresponds to MULTIPLE but not SINGLE concepts). R.A.P.'s determiner difficulties emerged only when mass nouns and determiners were number incongruent. The results of this research clearly indicate that nouns are lexical-syntactically specified for countability, but that the derivation of countability can additionally be influenced by conceptual-semantics. © 2014 Taylor & Francis.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-434292017-09-13T14:01:54Z From "some butter" to "a butter": An investigation of mass and count representation and processing Fieder, N. Nickels, L. Biedermann, Britta-Andrea Best, W. This paper investigates the representation of mass and count nouns at the lexical-syntactic level, an issue that has not been addressed to date in psycholinguistic theories. A single case study is reported of a man with aphasia, R.A.P., who showed a countability specific deficit that affected processing of mass noun grammar. R.A.P. frequently substituted mass noun determiners (e.g., some, much) with count noun determiners (e.g., a, many). Experimental investigations determined that R.A.P. had a modality-neutral lexical-syntactic impairment.Furthermore, a series of novel experiments revealed that R.A.P.'s processing of mass noun determiners varied depending on how mass nouns were depicted (single vs. multiple depictions) and how congruent these were with the conceptual-semantic information of target determiners (e.g., "some" corresponds to MULTIPLE but not SINGLE concepts). R.A.P.'s determiner difficulties emerged only when mass nouns and determiners were number incongruent. The results of this research clearly indicate that nouns are lexical-syntactically specified for countability, but that the derivation of countability can additionally be influenced by conceptual-semantics. © 2014 Taylor & Francis. 2014 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/43429 10.1080/02643294.2014.903914 Routledge restricted
spellingShingle Fieder, N.
Nickels, L.
Biedermann, Britta-Andrea
Best, W.
From "some butter" to "a butter": An investigation of mass and count representation and processing
title From "some butter" to "a butter": An investigation of mass and count representation and processing
title_full From "some butter" to "a butter": An investigation of mass and count representation and processing
title_fullStr From "some butter" to "a butter": An investigation of mass and count representation and processing
title_full_unstemmed From "some butter" to "a butter": An investigation of mass and count representation and processing
title_short From "some butter" to "a butter": An investigation of mass and count representation and processing
title_sort from "some butter" to "a butter": an investigation of mass and count representation and processing
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/43429