In many languages, words in count syntax quantify over countable individuals (e.g., too many strings), while mass nouns often don’t (e.g., too much string). Theories differ in how to characterize nouns that violate this pattern, such as object-mass nouns (e.g. furniture, clothing). These nouns exhibit mass syntax, but often quantify by number (Barner & Snedeker, 2005). On one hypothesis, the individuation of object-mass nouns is lexically specified (Bale & Barner, 2009). Another argues that, while count nouns always quantify by number, object-mass nouns have different quantification criteria depending on context (Rothstein, 2010), including function fulfillment (McCawley, 1975). We evaluated these hypotheses by comparing English quantity judgments for object-mass nouns to (1) superordinate count nouns, and (2) French judgments for translations of object-mass nouns. In each case, we found that object-mass nouns behaved like count nouns, and were no more susceptible to contextual effects. These findings support the idea that object-mass nouns specify individuation lexically.