ABSTRACT
Language processing has two bottlenecks: a surprisingly small verbal workspace (here simulated with two pushdown stacks: four arguments and two topics) and the lossiness of compressing a wealth of hierarchical and parallel information into serial strings of arbitrary symbols we call sentences. To compensate and to assist reconstructing the wealth of implied information, linguistic processing interfaces with two ancient cognitive faculties (predetermination and event modeling) and a more recent one (logic—the ability to abstract relations across domains). For example, the plot inventory of an event model can be used to resolve a pronoun reference where the intended antecedent has dropped out of the parser’s verbal workspace. As shown with examples, children’s books can very specifically and deliberately topicalize any one of these faculties to enhance the child’s linguistic processing skills.
