Re: Kanzi's doll

vera p john-steiner (vygotsky who-is-at unm.edu)
Sun, 17 Aug 1997 11:11:02 -0600 (MDT)

I like Mike's example from his grand-daughter, because it captures
imitation, yes, but also transfer and play. It is both constructive and
"co-regulated" with the absent speaker whose utterance provided the input
for this sentence.
On a larger note,I think imitation is both a precondition (see McWhinney's
work on child language) but also a continuous feature of language
acquisition. Particularly, the imitation and expansion of the child's own
utterances by more experienced speakers (see Cazden's classic work in the
sixties.) So once again, I think language is acquired as a shifting,
dynamic,
functional system and depending on task/activity, context, interlocutors,
etc. different learning processes achieve temporary salience.
Vera

On Fri, 15 Aug 1997, Eva Ekeblad wrote:

> At 09.56 -0700 97-08-15, Mike Cole wrote:
> >The other day my 20 month old grand daughter looked in her dolly's
> >ear and said, very solemly, " Oh, my, where did all that dirt come from?"
> >
> >Hard to imagine Kanzi doing that.
>
>
> Hey Mike!
> That's cheating: introducing language into the thought experiment!
>
> Isn't the human propensity to Imitate in the Narrow Sense supposed to be
> one of the preconditions for Language?
>
> Eva
> after the downtime
> the weber freeze has thawed
>
>

---------------------------------
Vera P. John-Steiner
Department of Linguistics
Humanities Bldg. 526
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
(505) 277-6353 or 277-4324
Internet: vygotsky who-is-at triton.unm.edu
---------------------------------