Baby development, Copying without understanding, meaning attribution

Been spending some time with toddlers and I've realized that babies are basically copy machines.

They may not necessarily understand what they are copying, but they would try their best to copy it. It's like what Dan Dennett says - Competence without comprehension.

I don't really know at what point they start to understand what they are doing, what they are saying, but at some point they do. My guess is that they start to associate an outcome with an action, which allows them to predict/expect something to happen when they act in a particular way or say something which is act of creation of meaning.

Also reminds me of something David Deutsch says. He quotes Karl Popper and the bucket theory of knowledge acquisition or something and says that you can't gain knowledge by reading. You gain knowledge by hypothesizing which are proven to be true or false upon experimentation (/interaction with the environment) This either reinforces the fact or weakens it, making space for alternative hypothesis. So the babies try to parrot whatever they hear and mimic whatever they see, expecting a certain outcome (usually, adults' vocal amazement at the babies' actions). This expectation is (almost immediately, and also over time) either reinforced or weakened. The attribution of meaning, at least at this stage, is exactly the (expected) outcome generated from this action.

Example: Making funny faces -> makes people laugh. 
                Therefore, meaning attribution:
                    funny faces = facial contortions that make people laugh
                    any other funny thing = something that makes you feel the same way that funny faces do