The mass/count distinction: evidence from on-line psycholinguistic performance.

Under the hypothesis that the mass/count distinction in English is marked by a monovalent lexical feature, this article investigates whether features, lexical or morphosyntactic, play a role in simple lexical decision. Research findings have yet to settle how many features are accessed during lexical decision and to what extent morphosyntactic features are computed out of context. We used two on-line lexical decision experiments (simple and morphosyntactic priming). Results show that the lexical feature "mass" is computed in both experiments. However, the morphosyntactic feature "plural" is subject to task-specific effects and surfaces only where operative. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.