This assumption neglects the alternative explanation that seemingly insignificant semantic details are pruned from memory after a short time while major entailments are retained longer

Such conceptual representations have tended to differ from logical ones in several respects. One, as already discussed, has been the emphasis by Schank and various other researchers (e.g., Wilks 1978; Jackendoff 1990) on “deep” (canonical) representations and primitives. An often cited psychological argument for primitives is the fact that people rather quickly forget the exact wording of what they read or are told, recalling only the “gist”; it is this gist that primitive decomposition is inten