Abstract
This chapter has two goals, one major and one ancillary: First, it will share in the endeavors of the other contributors to this book by analyzing and crystallizing the concept of “imitation” that was taken over as an “unexamined concept” (Kaplan, 1964) from everyday language. It is hoped that the combined conceptual analyses will differentiate and precisely specify the domain. In addition to this attempt at conceptual clarification, brief selections from parent-child interactions will demonstrate the usefulness of some of the differentiations and distinctions suggested. Neither conceptual nor factual exhaustiveness in the treatment of this complex topic can be the goal of a single essay. Such a result might be attained by the integration of all the contributions of this book, which in their diversity and broad range are more than the sum of their parts.
The mere fact that the child learns the language of his environment is evidence of the importance of imitation.
(McCarthy, 1954, p. 517)
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Moerk, E.L. (1989). The Fuzzy Set Called “Imitations”. In: Speidel, G.E., Nelson, K.E. (eds) The Many Faces of Imitation in Language Learning. Springer Series in Language and Communication, vol 24. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1011-5_12
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