Tomasello - Ch 5

Tomasello's discussion in Chapter 5 was fairly thought-provoking, and has spurred the following questions:

1. If young children are in fact "'imitation machines' as they seek to appropriate the cultural skills and behaviors of the mature members of their social groups" (159) through techniques such as "verb island constructions" (138), in what ways might the influence of a particularly creative adult impact the cognitive development of a child? I am led that to think that if "human children have a very strong imitative tendency," then imitating a creative or intelligent adult will enhance their ability to act creatively when they do eventually develop that skills. However, the very act of imitation is a foundation for creative skills that are to develop later, which might suggest that the mere act of imitating any adult, creative or not, impacts a child's cognitive development in the same way.

2. The discussion on pages 141-142 with regard to the idea that "construction itself carries meaning" (142) was fascinating. In the examples given by the author, the reader can imagine what the word "floos" might mean in a given context based on the words around it (ie: "X floosed Y" or "X was floosed by Y"). In some languages, such as Japanese, context is extremely important (and perhaps more so than in English). Does the importance of verb-island constructions diminish in these languages since verb-island construction involves using the same verb with different types of nouns if the child imitates the adult and thus imitates phrases based on context? Might that hinder a child's cognitive development in any way?