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How do children learn language, if not by imitation?
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Language is made anew by each generation. Pinker and other Chomskyans claim that most of language is already there, and is at most triggered by what children hear. They argue that children never hear enough instances to be able to construct the language in the way they do. They call this the 'poverty of stimulus argument'.
The reference to the little girl using her mother's voice was mine. I was thinking of Vygotsky. But the little girl uses her mother's voice in a back and forth conversation between several different characters - herself as child, her doll, her mother - to create something new. She doesn't just repeat what she has already heard; if she did, we'd find it rather strange.
but I suppose I'm arguing with myself : here's
something I wrote about this some ten years ago.