Constructing verb paradigms in French: adult construals and emerging grammatical contrasts

Children acquiring French at first use just one form of each verb, where the meaning identifies only the event-type. How and when do they add additional forms, with the appropriate meanings? In this paper, we explore the information available to children from adult reformulations of these early verb-form uses, and show how adult construals contribute to children’s learning to distinguish between the homophonous infinitival (donner ‘give-Inf’) and participial (donné ‘give-PP’) forms, both /done/, of class 1 verbs. We argue that conversational exchanges, with the construals adults contribute, enable children to differentiate the meanings of homophonous forms, and so begin to construct verb paradigms.     

Functional organization of cotransmission systems: Lessons from small nervous systems

Small invertebrate nervous systems allow one to ask a series of questions concerning the functional roles of cotransmitters. This review outlines some of the implications of cotransmission for target selectivity in complex neuropils. We suggest the possibility that a unique constellation of cotransmitters in individual identified modulatory neurons allows a specificity of action even when peptides may act over an extended distance, and when individual modulatory substances may be released from several modulatory neurons.