Generic mode -- keywords

[fork]

I have written a generic mode for sas editing (ESS sucks and is WAY to big and
complex, sorry if I offend...).  

Below [1] is a contrived example of that code, which basically highlights
comments, the keyword "and", and the funky SAS commenting style of "* blah;"
(asterix followed by semicolon with commented stuff in between):

When editing, if a defined keyword like "and" is contained in a "*;" type
comment, the mode doesn't highlight the *; comment, but as long as there is no
keyword, it works fine.

Is there a way to force the *; comment pattern to override the keyword behavior?

[1]:

(define-generic-mode 'simple-sas-mode
  '(("/*" . "*/"))delimiters
  '(
     "and" 
    )
  '( 
    ("\\(\\*[^;\\*/]*;\\)" 1 'font-lock-comment-face) 
    )
    ; ... other stuff 
)